Raikiri Daiquiri
by coincident
Summary: In which hooking up with the hottest shinobi in Konoha is a guaranteed cure for shyness. Sort of. Not really. ItaHina/AU/short stories.
1. The One With the Hookup

**A/N: **Lighthearted idiocy to tide you over while you wait for the TMAH chapter at the end of the week, and to counteract all the ItaHina angst you've been kind enough to read from me lately. Guaranteed to cauterize your valuable brain cells, or your five minutes back.

To my knowledge, this is the stupidest ItaHina fic in known history. Do leave me a note to stave off the cringefest that will inevitably ensue when I actually realize what I've written.

**Warnings: **Offensive views from one Yamanaka Ino, drunken reveling, possibly the most idiotic characterization of Uchiha Shisui ever to appear in print, stupid catty attempts at humor, and unashamed crack all the way through.

**Blatantly AU Elements: **What, you missed the episode with the Raikiri Daiquiris and Uchiha bling? Also, non-massacre, Itachi-in-Konoha.

Yes. Well. Enjoy.

**~X~**

* * *

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~X~**

My first kiss took place in a sandbox.

It tasted grainy, drastically altered my perception of the word 'slime,' and ended abruptly when my partner in the endeavor was body-slammed to the ground via psychological mind-link. Three-sixty-degree vision, overprotective fathers--I'm sure there's no need to go into the details.I was only seven at the time, but I've never recovered.

And, I'm pretty sure, neither has Neji nii-san.

The second kiss took place on a mission while Shino was on a bathroom break, which really should've rung some alarm bells since there aren't many epic love stories that start out like that, at least none that I'm aware of. This was later confirmed in the most unpleasant of ways. Forget basic shuriken training; all kunoichi should be informed that the Inuzukas consider canine saliva an effective antibacterial solution on missions, despite the fact that it does not smell--or taste, I assure you--like any antibacterial solution known to man.

The third kiss was by far the most disappointing, because after all, Naruto had been a regular fixture in my misguided fantasies since the genin days. It was just _supposed _to be good. It practically defied some law of nature when it wasn't, you know?

To be fair, it is indeed very encouraging to hear the love of your life moaning your name in the midst of a passionate snog--if your name happens to be "Sasuke," which mine isn't. It's not that I have a problem with anyone belatedly coming to terms with latent sexual tension between himself and his best friend; it's just that…well, his timing could have been better, that's all.

It's enough to make me want to swear off the fourth kiss before it even happens. And I have. Sworn off it, I mean. As far as I've seen, kissing and the…activities it spawns…seem to have more in common with D-class missions than anything else: you overprepare, you wade through disgusting substances doing something either mundane or deeply undesirable, and eventually, you get paid a lot less than you expected or deserved. So I, Hyuuga Hinata, am _no longer interested_. Take that, Ino! Not everyone has to get off on D-class missions, after all!

I would never actually _say _this to Ino, or to anyone really, but it's refreshing to think it.

You know. In my head.

...Yeah.

Anyway, I'm fine with this particular state of affairs--or the lack thereof, more particularly--because really, a lot of people have very good things to say about utter celibacy. I'm looking forward to trying it out myself.

At least, that's what I think until Ino decides to stage her _intervention_.

**~X~**

If you have ever, at some unsupervised and probably parentally deficient juncture of your childhood, thrown yourself in front of a steamroller driven by a egomaniacal dictator in the throes of some power-trippy wet dream who is _absolutely hell-bent_ on squeezing your body fluids out for pulpless orange juice and saving the limp remains of your physical casing to serve as fine-consistency lawn mulch, congratulations. You have the dubious honor of knowing exactly what it feels like to feature prominently in the plans of Konoha's very own Yamanaka Ino.

The only real difference is that the former tends to result in instantaneous bloody death, while the victims of the latter are nowhere near as lucky.

I should know there's a problem when Ino turns up at my doorstep looking excited enough to wet herself--for a moment I think she actually has and has discarded her pants entirely, but it looks like the spangly strip of whatever she's wearing is simply too skankerrific for my brain to process as clothing. She's got her hair down and looks a bit like a civilian cosmetics store vomited all over her face, but she's Yamanaka Ino, so she's still going to feature prominently in any number of shinobi dreams tonight.

I should really say something, but for whatever reason I just stand there stupidly and squeak. And I really do squeak. It's an actual _squeak_, dancing around the higher octaves and everything, and Ino just rolls her eyes before pushing me backwards—into my own house, which seems a little weird to me until I realize that this is probably the most sane of all the things that are going to happen to me this evening, if Ino's excited muttering under her breath is any indication.

"HINATA," she says, propelling me backwards and up the stairs, which, as my brain dimly registers, _cannot _end well, "I have the _best_ idea. Seriously. You're going to _die._"

In context, I can't help but interpret this as literally as it can be interpreted.

"So I was talking to Sakura the other day, and you know what she told me?" screeches Ino, pausing in her manhandling of me only to duck into our kitchens and beeline for the refrigerator. "She told me you're a _virgin_! Can you believe it?"

This question is so stupid that I actually have no idea how to answer it.

"Y-yes…?"

"I CAN'T!" roars Ino. She's found Hanabi's raspberry-crème parfait yogurt (with special scroll-shaped squeeze dispenser for kunoichi on the go) so I figure there's no point in my saying anything, since my sister, deprived of her yogurt, is a force of karmic retribution if there ever was one. "What the hell, Hinata? You're nineteen, and you're basically like, _sex on wheels_! Minus the wheels? What does that expression even mean anyway? But seriously, are you trying to break a record or something? This is just disgraceful! I mean, do you not know how to appreciate the fine male form, or what? Or, _ohmigod_, are you a—"

Ino's jaw goes slack and she stares at me, giving me a fine parting glimpse of the yogurt on its merry way to her stomach.

"N-no," I say, figuring I should contribute something to this conversation before it goes over my head entirely, "I've had…s-sexual experiences before, b-but they weren't v-very satisfyi—"

"Is this about that thing with Neji and the sandbox?" demands Ino with terrifying accuracy.

Yes. "M-maybe…"

"Or that thing, where Naruto was all, 'oh, Sasuke!' and you were like, 'um, I'm not Sasuke,' and then—"

_Definitely _yes. "I…c-could be…"

"Those aren't sexual experiences, you nut," screams Ino, throwing her hands into the air. The yogurt goes flying. This simply increases the probability that Hanabi will avenge my extreme discomfort of this evening, so I placidly let it happen. "Those are _misadventures_, like on Sex and the Hidden Village! NO! This is just stupid!"

It kind of is, in a village where most people are married and procreating by the time they're twenty-one, but the last thing you want to do with Ino in this state is _agree _with her, since it has a high chance of coming back to haunt you.

"Ino…I d-don't _want _to have a s-sexual—"

"OF COURSE YOU DON'T!" bellows Ino. "That's the problem! I mean, a nice girl, of age and everything, put off some of the greatest experiences you can have without a kunai—well, with one too, I guess, but that's not the point—just because of a few bad tries? Come on! Tell me that's not sad!"

It's sad. Ino's obvious need to sort out her priorities aside, it's pretty sad.

"Ino…I'm j-just not cut out for it. You've s-seen my history with—"

"See? SEE? Listen to yourself! That's why I'm here!" raves Ino. "You, Hyuuga Hinata, obviously have serious intimacy issues. Stemming from shyness and a deep-seated fear of men that probably comes from your loon of a father."

I hate when she goes amateur psychology on me. It's actually really scary, since Ino's been training under Morino Ibiki and it definitely shows—except that battle-hardened-I-will-break-you expression is about a thousand times more terrifying coming from a short blonde girl wearing a skanky outfit.

"I do n-not have a d-deep seated—"

"Denial," Ino handwaves, "it happens. So tonight, what we're going to do is get you LAID."

It's a well-known law of the universe that whenever someone says something like this, the one person who absolutely should not hear it under any circumstances waltzes right in and hears it out of context and acts accordingly. So of course, this happens. And Neji nii-san's jaw drops far enough to join Hanabi's yogurt on the floor.

He gets his act together surprisingly quickly, grabs my arm, and pivots me around so I'm facing away from Ino.

"Let's go, Hinata-sama."

"Oh, come off it, Neji!" Ino stalks over to him and grabs my other arm, and I'm now trapped in one of those awkward tug-of-wars that seem to erupt whenever Neji and Ino are in the same room together. I turn towards the more reasonable of the two in a halfhearted attempt at explaining away Ino's utterly brainless comment when I notice he's decked out in a startling array of—

"N-neji nii-san…is that…_hair gel_?"

Success! He releases my arm and his hand goes immediately to his hair, as if to check if the gelatinous, oddly shiny substance is still running through his locks like the aftereffects of a particularly violent sneeze.

"Ah…yes, Hinata-sama."

"Ooh!" coos Ino, who has a tenuous grasp on tact and sanity both. "Hot date tonight, Neji?"

"Hardly," he scoffs. "Our ANBU squad is off-duty tonight, and Tsunade-sama seemed to find it prudential to assign us a night of…_team_ _bonding_. We will be…imbibing alcohol at a…venue downtown." Neji nii-san is in the habit of inserting ellipses into his speech to show disdain, with the result that most of his sentences take far longer than they should to come out.

"You're going to a club? Which one?"

"The…Tsukuyomi," says Neji, drawing out a pause that would shame even Uchiha Sasuke, for whom ellipses comprise an entire mode of speech. For him this is probably salt in the wound—not only is it a _club_, it's a _club_ _named after a sharingan jutsu_, and that's got to chafe.

"Hey, we're going there too!" squeals Ino, despite the fact that I wasn't actually aware of this plan until she said it. "This is so exciting! Wait, wait—your _entire squad _is coming?"

"Yes. And might I inquire as to why you are subjecting Hinata-sama to—"

"OHMIGOD! Your _entire _squad? Including _Uchiha-san_?" The last is uttered in a breathy, fluttering tone of voice that Ino reserves especially for male members of the Uchiha family, who come up in conversation with her much more frequently than anyone would expect.

"Itachi-taichou will be there as well, yes."

Ino whips around and stares at me, and then I'm being yanked out of the kitchen so fast Neji nii-san can probably feel the breeze. She propels me up the stairs with demented energy, and when my door shuts behind her she sits me firmly on the bed and sits down, her eyes shining, heightening my impression of myself as a deer about to get brained by an oncoming vehicle.

"Ohmigod," she says sweetly, "this is just perfect."

"W-what is?"

"We're going to solve your little sexual self-esteem problem, of course!"

"W-wh—_how_?"

"Tonight, you're going to hook up with the hottest guy in Konoha."

**~X~**

Most of Konoha's male population hangs out at the Tsukuyomi when they're off-duty, according to Ino, and she says you can usually tell everything you need to know about them by what they're wearing and where they're sitting. There are the civilians, of course, who are all dressed up like we are, in attractive shirts and dark shoes and sandals that shinobi guys wouldn't be able to find without the aid of a tracking summon. They mill around, because it's a pretty good bet they come here more often than the shinobi do and know all the regulars, where the best seats are, where you're most likely to get into the fight, the whole deal. There are the shinobi making an obvious effort to look normal in their painfully ordinary civilian clothing, but they slip up now and then and you can catch glimpses of chainmail or shuriken holsters among all the plain black linen. They're mostly sitting on the sides, since instinct isn't something you bypass that easily and they've been screamed at by jonin teachers through the generations not to sit in the middle of a room if they have a choice, _ever_. Prime sniping position, and all that.

There are all those people. And then there are the Uchihas.

Looking into the corner where the Uchihas are sitting is like looking into a blinding light, although the light in the Tsukuyomi is so bad that your perception is already shot the moment you walk through the door. It's got this mirrored strobe light that throws light and shadows in alternating patterns all over the club, and everything looks black and white except the shiny crimson floor. Most people look like ghosts wading through a sea of blood.

It's really not clear why this is supposed to put anyone in the mood for what Ino so charmingly calls "sheathing the kunai," but there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

Anyway, the Uchihas aren't in civvies like the other shinobi, nor are they in dress clothes like the actual civilians. They wear their police uniforms, minus vests--long navy-blue shirts, fishnetted at the neck, with the emblem of the Uchiha police emblazoned over their right bicep. The Uchiha girls dress the same way. It's like they know they don't need to try to have others fawning over them.

Their corner is a mass of pale-skinned dark-haired people, with clumps of jabbering admirers orbiting them like planets around a brilliantly burning sun. Since—ironically enough—activated bloodlines aren't allowed in the Tsukuyomi, they're all dark-eyed for the night, which is probably some comfort to Neji nii-san in his eternal performance anxiety about the sharingan. Most of them are just exploring the outer limits of Uchiha broodiness, but there are a few exceptions—

"HEY! Yamanaka Ino! Over here, lady!"

Ino casts a disinterested (a ruse, I assure you, a total ruse) eye over to the Uchihas and squeals once she sees who's talking.

"_Shisui_! Hiiiiiii!"

She flounces over to the Uchiha corner, leaving a slew of envious feminine glares in her wake, and Sakura and I give each other looks and follow after her. I'm not entirely sure how Sakura got roped into this dubious venture of Ino's, but for me, she serves the same role as the breastplate does in an ANBU uniform, so I'm not complaining.

"Hello, darling," Shisui's saying, air kisses and all—this is an Iwagakure habit; they're all supposedly effeminate nutters over there, "Haven't seen you in _ages_! Where've you been?"

"Ohmigod," Ino begins, in what is surely the first of many "ohmigods" of the evening, "I've been down in interrogations with Ibiki-sensei! It's just awful! It's all mildewy—I swear I go through three conditionings a night—"

"No!" says Shisui. "But you look _gorgeous_, darling. Loving the fishnet look, as always, and is that…color-changing eyeshadow?"

"Genjutsu," drawls Ino, pleased that someone's noticed the absurd lengths to which she goes to ensure her makeup is more interesting than anyone else's. "Basic academy-level stuff."

"Wow, really? Well, who'd have guessed it was that useful?"

"I know, right? So, what're you doing here tonight, Shisui?"

"Well, scoping out the _fine _denizens of Konoha who've shown up on this excellent night, such as you lovely ladies of course—" Sakura gives a close-lipped smile as Shisui kisses her hand, and I practically have to stifle a shriek of dismay when he does the same thing to me (he's wearing lip gloss. He is so wearing lip gloss).

Uchiha Shisui is one of those people who can single-handedly shake your faith in the theory of genetics, because really, the only proof anyone has that he belongs to the Uchiha family is his much-extolled sharingan. Otherwise, you'd swear he was an Inuzuka or maybe a Yamanaka, thanks to his meticulously gelled curls and the sunny, slightly sleazy smile he has plastered across his face at all times, not to mention the dubiously teeter-tottering sexuality. Tonight, he's accessorized his police uniform with shuriken earrings and what looks like an enormous rhinestone-studded Uchiha fan pendant.

That's right. Uchiha Shisui is blinging the Uchiha fan. I release an involuntary squeak of horror and then he turns around and _notices me_.

"Well, hello there! Hyuuga Hinata, is that you? God, I haven't seen you since you were still crapping your pants at the sight of older men!" There's no real reason for him to scream this at the top of his lungs at a clear level of audibility for everyone in our vicinity, but he does it anyway, out of the goodness of his heart. It's really easy to understand why he's friends with Ino.

"H-hello, Uchiha-san," I blither uselessly, trying to find something to do with my hands to stop them from flailing in sheer terror. I end up grabbing Sakura's arm and squeezing it like I expect milk to come out.

"_Uchiha-san_? Ohmigod!" he yells. "Seriously, who're you talking to, my _dad_? Uchiha-san?!"

"She's new, darling," says Ino soothingly, latching onto Shisui's shoulder. "Be nice. Now, why don't you tell us what you're _really _doing here tonight? Surely you don't have the night off from…police duty?"

Ino flutters her eyelashes at the words "police duty" and I find myself hoping very hard that Uchiha Fugaku is inexplicably here in the club tonight and has just witnessed this blasphemous treatment of his police force's reputation.

"I would've if Fugaku ojii-san weren't entertaining an entire colony of maggots up his ass," says Shisui, displaying a hitherto unsuspected talent at providing scarring mental images we could all live without. "But when Itachi told me he was coming to the 'Yomi tonight I just _had _to come with. I mean—" he lowers his voice conspiratorially—"to see my plan come to…_fruition_…"

Both he and Ino collapse in a giggling fit which is unexpectedly sinister given the circumstances.

"Ohmigod," titters Ino. "So _you're _the one who planted that team-bonding shtick in Tsunade-sama's head?"

"Something like that," admits Shisui. "Come on, Ino! It's not like Hyuuga Neji would've ever set foot in here otherwise! And I'm dying to try my luck—I mean, have you _seen _his abs? I bet he trains shirtless! _Does he?" _He whirls around and grabs me by the shoulders.

"Um, I d-don't—I mean, we d-don't—"

"I knew it!" Shisui expertly knocks back a deflating curlicue of hair and rubs the gel off his fingers. "And tonight is like, my_ chance_. Wish me luck, darlings."

"Good luck," says Sakura, smirking slightly, because the only way Uchiha Shisui's getting into Neji nii-san's pants is if he arbitrarily runs across them at the dry-cleaners'. But Shisui apparently went to the trouble of using his doryoku on the Hokage—honestly, of all the things to use a mind-control dojutsu on, he picks this?—for the sake of this evening, so I don't say anything to him.

Poor Neji nii-san. It looks like I'm not the only one being coerced into sexual misadventures at the hands of an Uchiha.

"Good luck, Shisui!" chirps Ino. "So, where _is _Neji anyway? And that cousin of yours?"

"Itachi's over there," says Shisui, gesturing to a better-lit area of the room where an ANBU squad in casual gear's just come in and claimed a table by means of good old-fashioned intimidation tactics. "With Neji-boy. God, what I wouldn't do to get his bird out of the cage—"

This is the most ridiculous and disturbing notion of the branch seal I have ever heard, and I actually sway from side to side a little bit until Sakura props me firmly against her forearm.

"Wow, I'd really like to go say hi," says Ino dreamily, "If only someone would introduce us!"

If Iruka-sensei could hear her now, he would fail her on all the requisite subtlety classes and send her back to the Academy in tears.

"Ohmigod, just say the word," gushes Shisui.

"The word!" shrieks Ino, and they fall over one another laughing. Sakura stares, nonplussed, and I can actually see the chakra seething at her fists even without the aid of the byakugan.

"Come on over, you crazy lady," says Shisui, wiping away an imaginary tear. "I'd _love _to introduce you! That is, of course, if you'll return the favor…"

"Oh yeah, Hinata and Neji are, like, tighter than Uchiha Fugaku's a—"

"Let's go, Shisui-san," says Sakura crisply, clearly not wishing to dwell on further thoughts of Uchiha Fugaku's lower anatomy any longer than is strictly necessary. Shisui blithely picks his way through the maze of glossy black tables and seizure-inducing mirrors (presumably to render the savage glint of the strobe light even more optically painful) towards the ANBU group, and Ino scurries backwards and takes my hand in barely-concealed glee.

"This is it," she whispers. "So now, you have to come on to Uchiha Itachi, okay? And it won't be hard. You look _hot_."

I don't have any intention of actually doing this, of course; I'm just pretending to agree so that Ino won't decide to take drastic measures against me. I believe I've already expounded on her steamroller-on-hard-drugs personality, which in her second chuunin exam was described as "refreshingly tenacious" by a visiting daimyo who was clearly suffering testosterone-induced judgment failure at the sight of all that blonde hair.

But she's right about one thing—I do look…attractive; she procured a civilian dress for me that's remarkably free of ostentatious spangles, a pale lilac thing with an actual skirt and not just a strip of barely-G-rated cloth. It's run through and through with transparent sequins, so the entire thing catches the light and glitters—or flashes, more correctly, as everything sparkly does in the demented Tsukuyomi light. I can see Neji nii-san sitting with his ANBU squad, already casting us looks of intermingling disgust and horror, presumably at the sight of the dress.

"…you can talk about scrolls with him, or maybe not—Tenten says guys feel emasculated by the thought of stuff shooting out of oblong objects and killing them, which I can totally see, I mean, Shikamaru is—"

"Itachi!" squeals Shisui, cutting off Ino's rant. "And…Itachi's squad! Hi, guys!"

"Hello, Shisui-san!" says Rock Lee, who's earned his coveted spot on Uchiha Itachi's recon squad as a taijutsu specialist. He's sitting at the table nursing a standard-issue water bottle of something that's presumably non-alcoholic, as the club hasn't been leveled to the ground yet, and single-handedly disproving the kunoichi axiom that all men look better in ANBU uniform.

Because, black and streamlined as it is, it's still spandex, although I have to concede that it's an improvement over Lee's usual green.

"Lee-kun!" Shisui runs over to him and pecks the air next to his head before turning and slinging his arm around his cousin's shoulders. "And 'Tachi! Out for a night with the boys, huh?"

"Hokage's orders," Uchiha Itachi deadpans. "An outing for team solidarity. I am on duty, Shisui."

"Oh, you're _always _on duty, 'Tachi," says Shisui fondly, tugging on Itachi's ponytail and eliciting gasps from Ino, Sakura, and myself. If one of us did this to the only Uchiha we really know well—which is Sasuke—we'd probably find ourselves sporting third-degree burns and genjutsu scarring for the rest of our lives, which would be considerably shortened. "That doesn't mean you can't take some time off to meet these lovely ladies, can you?"

Itachi flicks his eyes to the side and stares at us, and I get the chills, big time.

At this point I should explain something about Uchiha Itachi, and the best way to do that is by explaining something about Uchiha Sasuke, his infamous little brother.

Uchiha Sasuke has so many admirers in Konoha (and elsewhere, according to Shikamaru, who sometimes moonlights at the Konoha tourism office) that it actually taxes the mathematical capacity of the brain to conceptualize them all. He's been an unaware homewrecker since the tender age of seven, when Sakura and Ino had a falling out over his existence that made the Kyuubi attack look like a routine skirmish. Now, at a lively nineteen, he has all the traits that make Konoha girls set mantraps in the street—a bloodline limit that makes the social-climber kunoichi among the population salivate, immaculate hair that might as well be a bloodline limit in and of itself (and probably is, given Uchiha tendencies towards inbreeding and other things which should be discussed at a later time), and an extremely coveted ANBU position on the squad of one Hatake Kakashi.

Suffice it to say that the leading cause of heart failure in Konoha is not high cholesterol. It's Uchiha Sasuke.

Now, Uchiha Itachi is several years older than Uchiha Sasuke. His hair is longer and shinier and doesn't bring to mind the rear ends of aquatic animals. He's more adept at the usage of his bloodline limit. He doesn't have a coveted position on an ANBU squad—he's the captain of his own. And he manages to circumvent the only real drawback to Uchiha Sasuke's otherwise desirable credentials—he doesn't have an acerbic personality that compels him to insult and deride his peers at every opportunity. Granted, this is probably because he doesn't actually seem to _have _a personality, per se, but the girls of Konoha are more than adept at looking past superficial factors like that—Ino's words, not mine.

This considered, you can only imagine how many admirers Uchiha Itachi picks up on a daily basis.

Or, more accurately, you can't. It simply boggles the mind.

So when Uchiha Itachi directs the bright spotlight of his attention over to us, Ino preens, Sakura turns white, and I resort to my time-tested squeak.

"So nice to meet you, Uchiha-san!" sings Ino, dancing over to him and giving him an eyeful of her dress, which looks less like an article of clothing and more like one of those censorship bars you see in questionable movies (Kakashi-sensei stood in for Kurenai-sensei on a mission with us once. It wasn't pretty).

"This is Yamanaka Ino!" says Shisui happily. "I'm sure you know her. She works with Ibiki-san over in interrogations! Ino, Itachi's _big _on the whole interrogations scene. He used to work there himself at one point!"

"Oh, really?" trills Ino. "You should come visit!"

"No, thank you," says Itachi gravely. "Prisoners in interrogations are in the habit of losing their bearings, and I find the overpowering stench of loosened bowels less than appealing."

There follows one of the most epic bouts of awkward silence I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing.

Shisui, who presumably deals with this on a daily basis, is unnervingly unfazed.

"Oh, Itachi, such a kidder," he says blithely, rubbing his cheek in Itachi's hair and sparking several strands into static electricity. "So, this is Ino, and you probably know Sakura—"

"Sasuke's imminent girlfriend. Yes, I do."

This is a remarkably considerate thing to say, because, whether it's true or not, Sakura's face lights up to a degree which almost banishes the awkward silence of a moment ago.

"And _this_," Shisui continues, in a tone which makes me think he's about to unveil a gigantic chocolate cake, "is Hyuuga Hinata! Grown up nicely, hasn't she?"

At this, Neji nii-san nearly breaks the Tsukuyomi's rule against activated bloodline limits, but he settles instead for a glare that could chip paint. Itachi gives me a disinterested look, which I nearly miss because of Ino's sharp elbow lodging itself somewhere behind my intestines.

"Um…n-nice to m-meet you, Uchiha-san!" I squeal out, literally spurred into speech.

"Reciprocated, Hinata-san," he replies. "Would you like to take a seat?"

"Yes!" screams Ino, conjuring several chairs out of apparently nowhere so quickly that I'm sure she must made have a summoning contract with bar stools at some point in her kunoichi career.

"My, I love what you've done with your hair tonight, Neji-kun," says Shisui less than subtly. He's tracing his fingers in the questionable viscous substance in Neji nii-san's hair, which is an invasion of personal space that I would laugh at it if it weren't so _utterly terrifying_. Hanabi, were she here, would snap a picture and cackle.

Neji nii-san looks so disturbed he forgets about my dress, and instead concentrates his energies on removing Shisui's hand from his hair.

A conversation of sorts begins between Sakura, Lee, and Shiranui Genma, the fourth member of Itachi's squad and probably the least offensive person at this table. It seems to revolve around whether or not running five hundred laps around Konoha is medically desirable or in fact possible, and at this point Sakura is losing the argument because no one in the five countries can possibly be expected to counter the sadly mistaken belief that green spandex is a holistic healing agent. Shisui is cooing things at Neji and apparently making little plaits into the ends of his hair, unbeknowst to him,

This leaves Itachi, myself, and Ino otherwise unoccupied.

I continue my present trend of doing absolutely nothing except occasionally squeaking in horror at Shisui's more brazen advances.

Ino is kicking me furiously under the table, ignoring the fact that it's not actually me she's kicking, as is evidenced by Genma's constant wincing. She mouths "TALK TO HIM!" in another display of her astonishing inability to grasp the meaning of 'subtlety,' and I sit there tight-lipped—I believe I've already mentioned my plan to not do anything she says. Sexual self-esteem or not, this is a searingly awkward situation, and I for one am not going to exacerbate it.

And then Ino does something so low, so underhanded, so jaw-droppingly unfair that I quail at simply thinking about the thought of the conception of the thought of what she does.

She raises her hands in the air while Itachi's looking away and whispers "_Shintenshin no jutsu!"_

It's so unexpected that I don't even dodge, and Ino's jutsu hits me with a wet, painful smack like a sack of soup. I'm shunted to the back of my mind and she takes up residence in the forefront. In front of me, her body slumps lethargically onto the table, head down and eyes closed.

"Is your friend all right," asks Itachi, completely unaffected.

"Oh, yeah! She's just tired! She's really hardworking," says Ino with my voice, in what is probably the most idiotic, transparent use of the Shintenshin I've ever encountered. She seems to realize it and kicks her voice up a notch into the higher registers, clearly attempting to mimic my own style of speaking.

"I'm r-really impressed by Ino," she stutters demurely. She contorts my body into an absurd pose in which my head is downcast but I'm staring up at Itachi through my eyelashes. "B-but…I'm even m-more impressed by y-you, Uchiha-san." And then she _latches onto his arm _like a barnacle growing on the underside of a boat.

Oh my god. If I were in possession of my body, I would faint.

Itachi, for his part, blinks.

"I've always w-wanted to g-get lost in your…genjutsu," says Ino-me, and she brings my hand up to tangle it in his hair. I'm not fully in possession of my senses in any meaning of the words, but even through my screaming haze of horror I'm surprised at how soft his ponytail is.

Ino tilts my head up and whispers, "Uchiha-san…let me…let me use m-my Gentle F-fists on you."

That's it. I am officially going to be the first person in the world to break the Shintenshin by fainting. And then Itachi comes to my—well, _his_, more specifically—rescue.

"Yamanaka-san," he says icily. "Please do not use your friend's body to molest me."

Ino's out of my body so fast it gives me whiplash. Her own head snaps up and she stares at him, totally nonplussed.

"I am s-so sorry," I say, wallowing in misery to a degree that would make Itachi's younger brother, the acknowledged lord of spontaneous misery fits, award me a certificate out of sheer pride.

Itachi shoots me a curt glance before rising and asking the table at large if they'd like drinks. Sakura, Lee, Genma, and Shisui, who apparently missed the whole horrifying episode, cheer and queue up orders for him, and he nods once before unexpectedly turning to me.

"Hinata-san. I would appreciate assistance."

Ino forgets about her temporary embarassment by flashing thumbs-ups at me and wiggling wildly in her seat. I get up, knowing there's nothing to do but follow him, and make my way behind him to the bar at the back of the room. I wish I'd worn something with a little more cloth to it so I could hide and possibly die while I'm at it.

At the bar, Itachi shells out coins for a Mangekyou Mixer (Shisui), two Sex in Suna (Sakura and Lee) and something with the mildly alarming name of Amnesia no Jutsu (Genma). After apparent consideration, he also orders an S-Class Smashed for Ino, which is quite kind of him considering she was too busy being a manipulative terror to place an order herself.

"What will you have?" he asks me suddenly, and although I really should expect this question, I don't, with the result that I scream loudly for a moment before answering.

"WHAT! W-well—I m-mean—I—"

"Would you like a drink, Hinata-san."

I actually would not, but embarassment is so heavy on my brain that I figure I'll take anything to lighten the load. There's the minor problem that I actually know less about drinks than Ino does about stealth, subtlety, and general common sense.

"Y-yes, but I d-don't…um…"

Itachi gives me another of his cool glances, which are at this point beginning to do distracting things to my insides, and tells the bartender, "Raikiri Daiquiris for the kunoichi and myself, if you would be so kind."

The bartender looks annoyed at the simplistic choice of drink, but he hands us two glasses immediately and stalks off to mix the more elaborate concoctions.

Raikiri Daiquiris, it turns out, are bubbly and sweet, and taste a little like peaches but a lot more like something unfamiliar and wild that couldn't be further from the taste of a mundane domestic fruit. There's only a hint of the unpleasant alcoholic taste that I remember from when Hanabi and I snuck into the Hyuuga family wine cabinet; the rest is all froth and saccharine goodness.

"It's g-good!" I say, and Itachi nods and sips what I now understand to be an extremely feminine drink.

"Hinata-san," he begins in a normal tone of voice that completely belies this entire situation, "now that you are supplied with refreshment, would you care to explain to me why exactly Ino-san was earlier employing your body to engage me in questionable activities?"

OH MY GOD.

I spit out the Raikiri Daiquiri and start hacking up a lung, possibly both of them, or at the very least a good deal of their inner lining, and am really about to faint onto Itachi's chest when he muses, "It is not that I am not propositioned by kunoichi on a daily basis, but most of them prefer to use their own bodies for the experience. This, I feel, is because it is probably a pleasurable experience."

Maybe it's the fact that I've just been used for a molestation run by Yamanaka Ino and her tenacious wiles, and this experience is too scarring to leave a person wholly sane afterwards. Maybe it's because I'm so disturbed by this entire evening that I don't really know how to react properly to anything at this point. Maybe it's the sight of Neji nii-san getting his hair braided by a starstruck Shisui catching up with me a little belatedly. And maybe it's the Raikiri Daiquiri.

But in any case, I start _laughing _at this remark.

What's more, I can't seem to stop, to the point where Itachi abandons his line of inquiry and simply leads me back to the table looking mildly concerned at my laughing fit. But finally, when I've reached my seat without spilling my drink or dying of humiliation at my latest bout of idiocy, something strange happens: he cracks a smile too. It's surprising; he's Sasuke's brother, and no one expects him to smile, much less at something that really isn't that funny.

"I suppose that did sound slightly conceited," he concedes, chuckling into his glass.

And at that point, the evening gets a whole lot better.

**~X~**

A few rounds of drinks later, the table's topography has drastically changed thanks to Sakura's chakra-laden fist making a mistaken lunge for Genma's head, and Lee, who unwisely forgot to ask for a virgin Sex in Suna, is dancing around the Tsukuyomi executing spinning high-kicks, eliciting cheers and thrown coins from the throngs of civilians milling about on the dance floor, and shrieks of dismay from the Uchiha corner, where dark-haired shinobi are struggling to restrain him. Neji nii-san has discovered the plaits in his hair and screams the scream of the utterly doomed before scrabbling blindly and futilely at them, but Shisui of the Mirage is nothing if not mind-bogglingly fast and he skillfully replaits them faster than Neji nii-san can undo them.

"I'll take them all out if you give me a dance, darling," coos Shisui, all syrupy glances and flashing flamboyance thanks to his hideous Uchiha fan bling, and Neji nii-san grabs the nearest unattended glass and downs the contents before following him out to the dance floor.

"In fact, the terminal velocity of Shisui's shunshin should engender frictional heat enough to set Neji-kun's hair afire," says Itachi suddenly at my side. He looks very controlled except for the strange sight of an entire pitcher of liquor next to him.

There's really nothing to say to this, so I sip what's probably my third or maybe tenth Raikiri Daiquiri. They are really sinfully good, and I'm rapidly formulating a theory that there's probably nothing in the world better than a Raiquiri Daiquiri and in fact, the hidden village system and Konoha shinobi in general were probably created to protect the almighty secret of mixing Raikiri Daiquiris.

"Once Shisui set my hair afire," Itachi continues.

"Oh," I say, determined to show sympathy although my strongest urge is to burst out laughing again, but clearly Itachi was deeply affected by this experience and I owe him some elegant and well-articulated measure of comfort, which somehow dies on the way from my brain to my mouth and comes out as, "That's b-bad."

"Yes, I was nine," explains Itachi, as if it matters at all whether your hair is set on fire when you're nine as opposed to any other age. "Do you know why that is bad, Hinata-san?"

"N-no…"

"It was the day of my Academy graduation ceremony," he says, "and…and I looked like…" he beckons me closer with the crook of one finger. I lean in obligingly.

"Like…_Sasuke_."

"That's r-really bad, Uchiha-san," I attest. "W-well…n-not that Sasuke's bad l-looking or anything, b-but he's n-not like you." The part of me that is still sober screams, hyperventilates, and dies messily inside my mind, while the rest of me sways gamely in the seat and wonders why the level of liquor inside Itachi's pitcher is declining so rapidly.

Itachi peers at me closely for a second before snatching my face between his thumb and index finger. Surprisingly, seen through the comforting orangey veil of the Daiquiris, this does not instigate the urge to faint. "Are you under Yamanaka's jutsu again, Hinata-san?"

"N-no…"

He releases me and turns back to the pitcher. Then, without explicable reason, he whips his head around so fast I don't understand why it doesn't break off and roll along the floor.

"You never told me," he says.

"T-told you what?" I hold out my glass and he tips more alcohol into it. Well, technically, he tips it onto the table, but he does get it right on the second try.

"Why Yamanaka wanted you to seduce me."

"Oh. It's n-not important…"

"It is almost as important as Sasuke's eyeliner," he says seriously, and in my deluded state I decide to interpret this as a compliment and not as the nonsensically insulting remark of fail it actually is.

"B-because I've n-never had a g-good experience w-with…"

Natural inhibition kicks in like the overbearingly repressive mothering force it is and clamps its iron hands over my mouth before I say something stupid. However, Itachi, who is just as far gone as I am, takes a strand of my hair between his fingers and twirls it around, examining it carefully, and the sight of this is so unexpectedly sweet that I blurt out "With _men_!" and wait for all hell to come crashing down around me.

But instead, all that happens is that Itachi blinks and looks slightly confused and says, "Is that true?"

"Y-yes." It's beyond me why anyone would lie about something so pathetic, but Itachi, not being a hopeless teenage girl, clearly doesn't share this opinion.

"Why did she choose me?"

"B-because you're the b-best-looking guy in Konoha," I offer, in a sentence that combines the most salient aspects of bravery and stupidity under the influence of alcohol.

"That is true," he admits.

Then, because he's one of those chivalrous shinobi of Konoha or something, or maybe it's not chivalry at all but some weird misguided sense of altruism, he says, "You only had to ask, Hinata-san."

And he leans in and kisses me.

And _God_, there's something more delicious than a Raikiri Daiquiri after all.

**~X~**

The next morning, when I wake up unfamiliarly clothed in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar chakra all over myself and an unfamiliar pain in my head, I let out an unfamiliar scream and jolt myself awake with several bracing Jyuuken strikes to my own solar plexus.

The consternation I feel turns to cold terror when Uchiha Itachi comes into the room at the sound of chakra pulsing, and I see that his clothes are different from what I remember as well.

There's only one thing to do in this situation, and I do it. I stand up, bow very low to the ground, and hammer out, "Thank you f-for your h-hospitality, Uchiha-san," before bursting into tears like an Academy student losing a game of shuriken tag.

Itachi closes the distance between us in a few steps and kneels, and the unfamiliar chakra on my body reorients itself as I realize it's _his _chakra, but this is only to be expected, given the situation, and it just makes me cry harder.

"Itachi," he says tonelessly, and this is a strange enough thing to draw a response out of me.

"W-what?"

"Not 'Uchiha-san.' After yesterday, you are certainly entitled to address me as Itachi."

_After yesterday_?

"M-my father is g-going to kill m-me," I mumble.

Itachi displays no hint of the loquacity he put forth under the influence of alcohol, and once again resorts to communication by means of gazes and flickering eyelashes.

"Hinata-san," he says, "What is the second rule of reconnaissance, as taught at the Academy?"

_What_?

But Academy training is as deeply ingrained as a gag reflex, so that you'll remember it in the midst of dangerous and horrible situations like getting your eye hacked out (Hatake Kakashi) or controlling a deadly demon fox (Uzumaki Naruto) or waking up in Uchiha Itachi's bedroom (Hyuuga Hinata, in a recent and predictable twist of events), so I immediately blurt out, "Assess empirical data before reaching a conclusion."

"Well done. As your superior in rank, I would like you to answer a few additional questions for me."

"O-okay—"

"Are you a virgin?"

"Y-yes…"

"Is your cervical region sore or in any way uncomfortable?"

I wince, but from embarassment. "N-no."

"Is the unfamiliar chakra prevalent on your body male, or female?"

I ignore my splitting headache to whisper "_Byakugan_!" and scope out my torso, which sports traces of the same unfamiliar chakra, but unmistakably female. It's still close enough to Itachi's to give me pause, though, which explains my earlier misunderstanding.

"…Female…"

"Understandably, as it is my mother's, and this is her guest room. Yamanaka-san and Haruno-san were, sadly, in no shape to care for you last night. Now, if you would be so kind, please form the seal and say 'Kai!'"

"_Kai!_"

"Excellent. You have ascertained that this is not, in fact, a genjutsu. Based on this empirical data, would you conclude that we had sexual intercourse last night?"

A wave of relief almost as heady as the accompanying embarassment washes over me and nearly knocks me from my bearings.

"N-no!" A smile splits my face, almost against my control. The headache recedes temporarily, and Uchiha Itachi smiles very slightly as he sees me relax.

Then I remember something.

"Y-you said…after what h-happened yesterday…"

And then something strange happens. Itachi breaks eye contact and looks away, seemingly contemplative or…

…embarassed?

"I did kiss you," he says quietly. "Please accept my apologies."

What? What?

"Uchiha-san! P-please don't apologize…I p-practically asked for it!"

"You were obviously inebriated."

"R-right…"

This time, there are no meddling friends or headsplitting club lighting or poundingly loud music. I don't have anything to fall back on or blame for my resulting insanity and I definitely don't have any clue about why or when I decide to do what I do next, except that this is that sort of story, and it has to happen.

All I really know is, drunken or not, I _liked _that kiss. It was the best kiss I've ever had in my life, and I _like _Uchiha Itachi, and he's the best man I've ever had in my life, and there's something not right about the fact that all these "best's" had to happen when I was half-smashed and clueless of what I was doing, because I'm too shy and inhibited and _stupid _to take advantage of them when my eyes are wide open. That girl Uchiha Itachi kissed last night was a different girl, a slightly bolder, wiser, better girl than the Hyuuga Hinata I know, and right then I decide that—because being a kunoichi is a matter of constantly channeling the better versions of yourself—I don't need a Raikiri Daiquiri to be that girl again.

So that's how I go over to him, pull his head down, and shut up the spasming voice in my head by sealing my mouth to his.

"I wasn't in-inebriated that t-time, Uchiha-san."

He smiles, the slow smoldering flame of a smile I've come to expect from him, and twines his arms around me.

"_Itachi_, Hinata-san. And I know."

**~X~**

My first kiss took place in a sandbox. My second was a misguided attempt at romance from a teammate. My third was the almost-fulfillment of what never really should have been one of my fantasies in the first place.

My fourth was a drunken kiss at the Tsukuyomi that led to a half-conscious, delusional night under the tender care of Uchiha Mikoto and her solicitous eldest son, and my fifth was a spurt of bravery to prove to myself that I could be someone who took what she liked, with or without the aid of alcohol.

But my sixth is in Uchiha Itachi's own bedroom, with Konoha sun cutting triangles of light on his wooden floor, and our hair mixing together like ink on his pillow; my hands on his shoulders and his fingers tracing their own sparkling Chidori paths down my back, and my alcohol-induced headache dissipating steadily as he coaxes out a newer, sweeter kind of pain with his soft addictive mouth.

It's powerful. It's sweet. It's unsteady. It's new. It sends a rush through my body like current through a wire, and it leaves me both satisfied and deeply desirous of more.

In these and a lot of other ways, I guess it's quite a bit like a Raikiri Daiquiri.

**~X~**

_end_


	2. The One With The Morning After

**A/N: **Never underestimate the power of reviews: this chapter was never supposed to exist, but was written as a heartfelt thank-you to those of you who were kind enough to comment on the first one. Because I badly want feedback on my sad attempts to practice humor writing. So if you reviewed this last time, give yourself a pat on the back, and have a second serving--who knows how much more will be forthcoming? For now, think of these as chronologically-correlated standalone one-shots.

**Blatantly AU Elements: **It's CRACK. Other than that, Itachi-in-Konoha-and-not-evil.

**Warnings: **Crack, crack, crack, crackity crack. Stupid fluff. Shameless parodying of a disturbing canon scene. Uchiha Shisui, and thus, insinuations of dodgy slash activities. Violence as acknowledgment, as it usually is in the Narutoverse. Hinata as a pretty snarky internal narrator. And...I don't think the Uchihas would fall victim to Hinata's stupid scheme any more than you do, but this is essentially a cliche girly rom-com with ninjas in it, and has been written as such.

**Premise: **For every bar story, there's a morning-after story not far behind.

Enjoy!

* * *

So, six kisses, right? The sixth of which is the best? Presumably because it's going to lead to several more, each exponentially better than the last?

That assumption—or fantasy, as it were—is quickly proven incorrect, because only a few seconds into it, there's a clamorous banging on the door, and by door, I don't mean the door of Itachi's room, which would be understandable—it's the door of the entire _house_, two floors and a courtyard away, which is definitely more alarming as we shouldn't even be able to hear it. Someone is definitely releasing excess aggression by means of the manly sport of knocking on a wooden plank.

"IS UCHIHA ITACHI IN THERE?"

That's right. Everybody wants Uchiha Itachi. _Everybody_. Maybe for different reasons, but they all want him.

"Hinata-san. Excuse me," Itachi says politely, straightening his shirt and redoing his mussed-up hair with a remarkable degree of efficiency that will later seem extremely suspicious to me. "If you will make your way downstairs and wait in the kitchen, I will provide breakfast."

Oh, you had better provide more than breakfast, Uchiha Itachi.

I do a double take, analyze what just ran through my head, and consider various ways to make a hangman's noose out of Itachi's bedsheets so that I can die of shame, then discreetly scope out the surroundings for the possible presence of Ino—which is standard procedure when you find yourself entertaining less-than-sane thoughts.

Itachi skips down the stairs (…this is stretching the truth on a massive scale, but he _does _seem a little more blithe than yesterday) and opens the door, and because I have nothing else to do and feel awkward moping around in his bedroom by myself, I skulk down the stairs after him. The kitchen, conveniently, is close enough to the main door for me to eavesdrop—something which I end up not having to do, as Itachi spots me, courteously waves me over, and introduces me to some gimlet-eyed men standing in the courtyard.

The men are dark-haired and attempting, badly, to rock the whole Uchiha-police-you-can't-touch-this kind of look, but it falls short—quite literally; some of them are under five feet. The Uchiha crests on their shirts are _huge_. Ino would say they're compensating for something.

One of the men looks at me as if I'm something he's just unearthed from underneath a toenail and turns back to Itachi, snapping, "We're here about the meeting yesterday. Why weren't you there?"

"Forgive me. I was—"

—getting drunk on Raikiri Daiquiris and picking up girls—

"—on ANBU duty."

Well. This is, technically, true.

The Uchiha police chiefs seem thunderstruck, as if this is the one answer for which they absolutely did not plan.

"The other person who was not there," says another ominously, "was Uchiha Shisui."

There are, in my experience, only three phrases in the language which can ruin a day simply by their inclusion in conversation. One is "under attack." Another is "behind you!" The third is "Uchiha Shisui."

Itachi blinks in a way that manages to convey extreme horror and extreme boredom at the same time, which, to my prior knowledge, was not even possible. "How exactly is this my affair?" he asks.

"He left this note at headquarters, asking us to convey it to you when you returned."

Itachi takes the note and looks at me with a raised eyebrow, indicating that I should also be privy to the contents—probably since I was there last night too and presumably have some concern for Shisui's well-being.

The note reads:

_Hey Itachi!_

_I'm headed to Neji's! He's gonna show me his caged bird. HEHE! Now, were those Mangekyou Mixers just fucking with my brain, or did you actually go home with Hyuuga Hinata?! Damn! You sexy thang! You know what this means—EPIC SLEEPOVER WHEN I GET BACK. _

_Oh, and could you be a sweetie and tell the police chiefs I won't be there tonight? Places to go, people to do, you know how it is._

_Thanks hon! _

_XOXO_

_Shisuizzle_

I can hear something melting and dripping out of my ears. On close reflection, it's probably my brain.

"…Sh…_Shisuizzle_?"

"I did not endorse it," assures Itachi.

The Uchiha police chiefs all look at each other as if one amongst their number has arbitrarily bludgeoned them all with a two-by-four.

"We're going to have to conduct an inquiry into this," one of them says finally. "It…compromises the police force's reputation for the deputy chief to refer to himself as…Shisuiz…"

He can't even say it. Understandably.

"An inquiry?" Itachi's hand clenches around the note, and his face, which normally seems devoid of any emotionally triggered facial muscles at all, tenses very slightly. "Are you insinuating I had something to do with this?"

The police chiefs are attempting to leave, but one of them can't resist tossing out a snide, "Well, who's the one who spends most of his time hanging out with _Shisuizzle_?" before he goes. A mistake. If you have to toss out a snide remark as you're leaving, it's probably a mistake.

The weird bell-like noise the sharingan makes when it activates chimes loudly, and Itachi's in their faces before you can say "shunshin."

"Go inside, Hinata-san. There should be Kunoichi Krunchies in the cabinet over the fridge. I'll be there in a moment."

**~X~**

It literally is a moment. I'm just tipping the Kunoichi Krunchies into a bowl when Itachi comes back in, looking chipper—by which I mean his expression falls somewhere in the area of "harmlessly bored" rather than the default "repressed sociopath offended by your existence."

"If you are serving cereal, I would enjoy a bowl of the Froot Shooriken. I will now be making eggs. How would you like yours?"

And this is the exact day of my life when I understand Ino's theory that the best way to assess your knowledge of a person is by observing what he has to eat first thing in the morning.

This is what Uchiha Itachi has:

Two full bowls of Froot Shooriken with honey and powdered sugar, "smiley face eggs" (he claims he sharingan'd these from his mother, who refuses to tell him what the real name is), cherry-flavored mochi, and a glass of milk with strawberry syrup in it.

This is what I learn from this:

Despite having made out with this person (both drunkenly and in a sober state) I really know absolutely nothing about him. Because I would never, not even while inebriated, have thought he would willingly consume such diabetically threatening fare under any circumstances.

This is actually very disturbing. A casual hookup, for me, is something you do with the buttons of a dress, not an encounter between human beings. Clearly, my knowledge of Uchiha Itachi is sketchy at best, and with that in mind, the chances of this isolated experience becoming something more than that seem to plummet along with my good mood from the morning.

But if I'm capable of going up to him and _kissing him_, which is something that would have induced immediate heart failure in me at this time yesterday morning, I'm more than capable of getting to know him! That's my way of the ninja, oh yes, it is! So I begin with an impressive, witty, and brave statement.

"D-don't you g-get tired of all th-that sugar?"

I realize belatedly that this was not impressive. Or witty. Or brave. It was just stupid.

Itachi, who seems to be deeply interested in his bright pink beverage, mistakenly interprets my question too specifically. He observes his glass in slight puzzlement. Unsurprisingly, he does not have a milk mustache—for which I am grateful, as the sight of Uchiha Itachi with a pink milk mustache would probably reduce me to a gibbering wreck at this point.

"Milk is very important, Hinata-san," he says gravely. "I encourage you to have some as well. Will you take strawberry syrup."

This is one thing I _have _learned about him—when he doesn't put question marks on the ends of his questions…they aren't questions. I squeak and hold out my glass, which until now held orange juice. He thoughtfully mixes strawberry syrup into my milk.

"Would you like a curly straw, Hinata-san?"

"…N-no, that's—that's all r-right…"

The entire situation is now escalating drastically into surreal territory, as there is no reason why the Uchiha household, comprised of parents and notoriously deadpan eighteen and twenty-three-year-old boys, should stock curly straws as regulation kitchen utensils. I save my sanity by telling myself that they probably keep them on hand for Shisui.

"Milk contains vitamin D," Itachi is continuing, carefully stirring some of his own into his second bowl of Froot Shuriken. "Vitamin D prevents osteoporosis. I believe that osteoporosis is quite threatening. Last year, we received intelligence that one of the sannin Orochimaru's subordinates—Kimimaro, I believe his name was—fell victim to osteoporosis in the middle of a battle situation. A most disgraceful end for a shinobi of his caliber."

"…Y-yes, that's v-very interesting," I flounder brilliantly. Itachi treats this as an intelligent contribution.

"I see you understand the importance of milk. I am glad to see this in the young people of Konoha."

_Young people_?

"Young p-people?"

Itachi blinks in puzzlement. "…Of course, Hinata-san. You are Sasuke's classmate, a child in your own right, as is he."

I bolt up, nearly knocking over my half-eaten Kunoichi Krunchies.

"I'm s-sorry, Itachi-san," I blurt out. The unpleasant sensation of warmth in my neck spreads like a cancer to the rest of my face. "I n-need to get h-home. Thank you f-for—" the kisses, the lack of nocturnal molestation, the courtesy— "the…milk. I'll s-see you around."

And then I'm fleeing from the Uchiha complex as if it's a raging pit of hellfire and I'm a marshmallow slowly roasting in its blistering embrace, not entirely in a metaphorical fashion, as I have indeed been privy to a certain Uchiha embrace not quite half an hour ago, and it most certainly served to induce sensations of a less-than-temperate clime.

I don't know what my subconscious mind intends to accomplish by presenting me with this memory; I really don't. Especially at this juncture, when Uchiha Itachi has just abruptly disabused me of any half-baked or even somewhat partly-baked notion that he may, after his enthusiasm of the night and the morning, see me as something of an equal, or see this entire…whatever it is…as anything but a random indulgence of a child's hormonal whim.

I can't stop a little whimper from clawing its way out of me.

Clearly, there is only one person who can be counted on to bail me out of this mess. I finally reach the Hyuuga compound and have just turned on my byakugan to find her when I'm confronted with a sight that forever replaces that incident with Ko ojii-san and the lingerie as my new Top Reason Visual Bloodlines Are A Serious Liability to Mental Health.

It's Uchiha Shisui. And Neji nii-san. Walking out of Neji nii-san's branch family flat. Or, more specifically in his case, _limping_ out of his branch family flat.

OH MY GOD.

**~X~**

While my brain and my innocence are joining hands and leaping off a cliff together to their glorious and bloody deaths, the reflexive part of me notes that Neji nii-san and Shisui are coming into the normal sightline (rather slowly, no doubt on account of the aforementioned bodily impediment, as well as the fact that Neji nii-san seems somewhat hung over) and I hurriedly disarm myself of the byakugan and attempt to accentuate my resemblance to an innocent bystander.

"G-good m-morning, Shisui-san!" I shriek, a textbook verbal flail of paranoia. "H-how are you!?"

Shisui turns his hawkish gaze on me and I freeze, although it isn't like I was moving anyway. I belatedly recall that he has a mind-control dojutsu and is not averse to using it for frivolous and appallingly stupid purposes.

Quite honestly, what were the Uchihas thinking? I understand that this ability probably seems useful on paper or in someone's deluded imagination, but why would anyone want someone with a mind-control dojutsu _living in their midst_, especially when that someone is as terminally insane as Shisui?

Shisui blinks at me for a few unnerving moments, then smiles a large friendly smile that makes me wonder if he's about to lunge at me and lick my face.

"Ohmigod, Hinata-chan! How are you? When did you—" He stops. The smile mutates into a hideous leer. "…When did you get in?"

I cringe and start shrieking again so as not to have to acknowledge Neji nii-san and his obvious difficulties in walking.

"O-oh! W-well I—"

"Do you have a milk mustache?" Shisui leans in and touches the corner of my lips, which dredges up a feeling of deep desire, this being the desire to faint. "And it's…pink? OHMIGOD! Hyuuga Hinata, you really _did _go home with Itachi last night, didn't you! Naughty!"

"_What_?" Neji nii-san's head whips around and he stares at me in unabashed horror. "Hinata-sama, you…you _went_ _home _with…with _Uchiha Itachi_?"

I have never heard Neji nii-san use so many italics in a sentence in my life and it obviously short-circuits several important parts of my mind, such as common sense, because I immediately blurt out, "I w-wouldn't be t-talking, Neji nii-san."

There ensues a silence so thick I could probably stab a shuriken in it and have it stick.

"Oh, he isn't!" offers Shisui laughingly, oozing past Neji nii-san like a tentacled creature of the deep and sliding an arm around my waist. "Talking, I mean. But just between you and me, Hinata-chan, I like him better that way, if you know what I mean…"

I am seized by an immediate need to thrash around and die. I have never planned on getting so close to the Uchihas in my life. What's next, Sasuke coming out of nowhere and deciding to have a go too?

Neji nii-san treats Shisui and myself to his signature glare, which elicits a squeak from me and a chuckle from Shisui that should really never be heard outside a bedroom or a B-grade movie of a particular genre. However, my comment, while misguided, is certainly not _wrong_, and so he simply flips his hair back over his shoulders and scowls.

"We will discuss your…conduct at a later time, Hinata-sama."

"Neji-chan, protective big brother! Ohmigod, HOT!" squeals Shisui, effectively banishing whatever wisps of an ominous mood this conversation was beginning to acquire. "I love it! Speaking of protective big brothers…how was _your_ night, Hinata-chan? Itachi's probably annoyed it was cut short; he's really a seventy-two hours kind of guy—"

I stare at him and wonder if there's anything to those rumors of Uchiha inbreeding. There has to be an explanation for the devilishly good looks, the purity of the sharingan, the apparent genetic predisposition towards mental instability…

Shisui interprets my gobsmacked expression of consternation correctly and actually giggles. He's in fine form this morning—up close, I can see the lip gloss, so this particular theory is hereby confirmed—and doesn't seem to be suffering from alcohol-related discomfort at all, and when he leans in and murmers in my ear, I'm overwhelmed with the scent of what seems like a cross between standard-issue field aftershave and strawberry-kiwi bath gel.

"Don't worry, Hinata-chan! Itachi and I never—well, we came pretty close that one time when I was seventeen and he was fifteen, but it was really just experimentation, and I _told_ him, I said, 'that's why you wear a mask on your ANBU missions, Itachi!' And he—"

I can't figure out if the look Neji nii-san is giving Shisui is disgust or jealousy.

"Oh, come _on_, you two—I'm just fucking with you…'Tachi's as straight as something that's also as straight as another straight thing! Take that stick out of your ass and shake it around! The ass, not the stick—although I'll forgive you if you don't, Neji-chan, I understand yours may be a bit—"

"I'M SORRY, I H-HAVE TO L-LEAVE NOW!" I scream, nearly in tears, and peel out of there. Behind me, I hear something that sounds either like "Hack a rock, would you, so?" or "_Hakke Rokujuyon Sho!" _and Shisui's maniacal giggling.

I will gladly leave them to sort out the dynamics of that particular relationship by themselves. I have my own relationship-dynamic-sorting to do, or more specifically, I have in mind someone who can do it for me. And there she is, on a swing in the inner courtyard, twirling her braid around her fingers and biting her lip over what looks like a letter. When she sees me, she folds the letter into efficient thirds and curls her feet up on the swing in a menacing manner.

My younger sister is the only person in the world I know who can make sitting on a swing look like an acceptable battle stance.

"Ne-san," greets Hanabi, "So. You're home."

I eye what can be seen of her letter curiously as I take a seat; the ending lines, which read "…_unfortunately illegal as of your last correspondence with the Fire Country daimyo…" _are less than promising. She glares at me and tucks the letter into her shirt, then leans forward, grabs a fistful of my hair, and intones, "_Spill_."

Verbal hyperventilation ensues.

Hanabi sits back on the swing when I'm finished and narrows her eyes. "So you're worried that—"

"He s-said I was a _young p-person_, Hanabi…this obviously isn't g-going anywhere."

"Is he nine hundred years old?" she demands.

"…T-twenty-three."

"That's fine," says Hanabi, and I wonder why she has this all calculated in her head to begin with. "It could totally work."

"Hanabi, there _is _n-no 'it!' That's the p-problem…it was a…one n-night thing. He p-probably thinks I'm t-too little and w-weak to be with him, or something."

"Did he say that?"

No, but it wasn't like I was about to _ask_.

"God, ne-san, I bet you didn't even _ask_."

"Hanabi!"

"What? That's just stupid. A guy like Uchiha Itachi, you have let him know where you stand, or else you end up right where you did—drinking milk in his kitchen and listening to him lecture you about vitamin D. What the hell, seriously?"

"It had strawberry s-syrup in it," I feel the need to remind her, as if this somehow redeems the situation.

"…Right. Breakfast of champions. Anyway, ne-san—I didn't know you were so into Uchiha Itachi. Even if it _was _a one-night stand—and this, in the loosest possible definition of the phrase, since you didn't actually do anything—why do you care?"

This is a surprisingly pertinent question, and I have to wonder why it's always people like Ino or Hanabi, who initially seem like vacuous valley girls of the fluffy brain-dead sort, who're the only ones who think to ask things like this of those of us who are supposedly more enlightened.

Am I, in fact, 'so into Uchiha Itachi?'

The answer, I decide, is complicated. Itachi, in the immortal words of Ino, is at least seventeen different kinds of hot, and even I have to admit that everything about him—the way he looks like a girl in his ANBU fatigues, his ridiculously pretentious way of talking, his calmness in the face of appallingly awkward situations—constitutes fetish fuel of the most potent kind.

And _God_, his kisses…

I've only had two, and already, my internal organs are beginning to melt at the thought of more.

However, this is really only an indication that my deprived feminine hormones are _so into Uchiha Itachi_, not me. And this is understandable—a fixation on the person who gives you your first real kiss; isn't that how it's supposed to happen? It doesn't mean it's logical or even real, does it?

At the very least, I didn't like being referred to as a _young person_. I mean, really—does he go around routinely taking advantage of _young people_?

…_How often has he done this before?_

My jaw practically unhinges as this thought spontaneously gives birth to itself.

"H-Hanabi! What if he's d-done this before?"

"What do you mean, _what if_—" The notion dawns on Hanabi in an almost visible sunrise, and I can see she understands what the problem is when she leaps off the swing and sends it wildly ricocheting, back and forth, the stock-movie premonition of doom if there ever was one. She has a plan. It's apparent. There will be—horror of horrors—a _confrontation._

"A Hyuuga," she snarls, "is _never _a notch on anybody's bedpost. Especially an Uchiha one. Go get your shuriken holster on, ne-san."

I was definitely envisioning a potentially civil conversation, not a battle, but that goes to show how ultimately unproductive the entire concept of envisioning is in the first place.

"M-my holster?"

"Oh, _yes_."

Oh, _God. _"…Why?"

"We're going to show Uchiha Itachi that you're not weak."

"And th-then?" I ask, feeling that there must be some portion of this plan I'm missing, because it seems to be even more disjointed than anything else that has happened in the past twenty-four hours, which is quite an accomplishment.

Hanabi looks at me the same way she does when I fail to grasp a Jyuuken kata within five and a half seconds of its demonstration, as she invariably does every time. And I, predictably, feel the same sense of impending doom.

"And then you're going to be his girlfriend, of course."

**~X~**

The plans of a younger sibling generally make a lot of things—namely noise, trouble, and shrapnel—but it's a notable truth that these things rarely ever include sense. Still, Hanabi's idea of enticing Uchiha Itachi into coupledom has a certain fascinatingly warped logic to it, so I go along with it, inasmuch as anyone can be said to _go along _with Hanabi and not _be dragged forcibly behind her_.

This is a mission to save Hyuuga face, after all, and that's nothing if not S-Class. Father would be extremely proud, or perhaps he wouldn't.

Actually, there shouldn't be any 'perhaps' in that sentence, but there shouldn't be a lot of things happening at this point, and that doesn't stop them from happening anyway.

I really need to stop musing about the technical composition of my internal ravings. This is probably why I can never think of anything particularly scintillating to say in actual conversation, because my brain overheats and kills itself.

Anyway.

"Really strong shinobi need to see you as an equal in order to consider you relationship material," Hanabi explains as we wend our devious way through the Konoha marketplace and she scopes out stalls for the presence of any of the people on her ICHA-ICHA WEASEL LOVIN'!!!!!! List (a code, supposedly, albeit not a subtle one). "Their masculinity is practically one of their jutsu, so they need to see that you can match it, or at least vaguely approach it. Actually, the best thing is to like, excel up to a certain point and then stop right before you're as good as them, because if you're as good as them, that totally freaks them out and then they start with that whole unhealthy acknowledgment complex Naruto has, where he's like, incapable of hooking up with anybody before having their chuunin exam stats memorized. Neji nii-san's got the same thing going on, which is why he and Tenten never really happened—"

He and Tenten never really happened because he apparently swings a good one-eighty degrees in the other direction, but I figure Hanabi doesn't need to know this just yet and allow her to continue with her oblivious, brutal assassination of reason in general and feminism in particular. Poor Tenten would probably shrivel up into horrified mush at the mere mention of her name in this type of conversation.

"—and Uchiha Itachi, since he was ANBU at like, ten—"

"Thirteen."

"—since he was ANBU at like, ten, he probably has issues about kunoichi and their techniques, _especially _since you've got a visual bloodline limit too and that could easily be seen as a threat to his masculinity, which is of course directly related to the sharingan—Sasuke, as far as I hear, had serious performance anxiety issues until he developed that third tomoe. But having a byakugan also makes you look like prime genetic stock—"

My sister never fails to amaze me with her refined, cultured attitude towards all things romantic.

"—and despite Neji nii-san and whatever chip he's got surgically affixed to his shoulder, you're actually not a weak kunoichi, ne-san. Ino doesn't even have any melee jutsu, and Sakura has that weird super-strength but it's not like that's anything special, because half the jutsu in the freaking world can break through solid objects—honestly even the Jyuuken can do it! People only think you're weak because you skulk around and act like a mouse. So we're going to show Uchiha Itachi that that's not the real you—and make him _pay _for treating you like a one-night thing and taking advantage of you while you were, you know, under the influence."

The mouse persona actually _is _the real me, and I'm not sure if mutual consent counts as 'taking advantage,' but really, Hanabi is unstoppable in the way massive objects subject to the pull of gravity are unstoppable, so pointing this out would be unwise.

And besides—Uchiha Itachi actively patronized me—he called me a child! He probably thought of it as a one-night thing the second he laid eyes on me.

Hanabi pauses in the middle of a dirt lane and checks the list again. Then she sighs, flips her hair, and shoos me away with little flicks of her hands.

"This is just ridiculous. I'll find the people we need, and you go on ahead—I'm going to be watching from close by, so don't worry. If things get out of hand, I'll do…something."

Most people, when they say this, have no idea what the 'something' is, but Hanabi always does, and ironically, this serves to make me feel even less reassured than I already am.

"Go on, ne-san. I'll send the others to meet you at the easternmost wall of the Uchiha complex—leave that bit to me. You just do what we talked about. Treat it like a mission."

A mission. Right. This is the stupidest mission I have ever received, bar none.

But, stupid mission or not, I'll do what I'm supposed to. I'm a kunoichi, after all, and that's my way of the ninja!

Or, you know. Something.

**~X~**

I'm waiting, chakra suppressed so I appear as a loitering civilian to any curious sharingan eyes, when Shino shows up just as he was supposed to and nearly makes me sprain my spine swiveling around to look at him.

"Shino-kun!" I say, both relieved and disgruntled at my teammate's presence, as it indicates that ICHA-ICHA WEASEL LOVIN'!!!!!!—so-called—has officially begun. "How d-did Hanabi convince—"

"How? She said it was a matter of your honor, and as your teammate, I had a duty to uphold it," he offers blandly, although I personally think he couldn't care less if my honor took a running dive off the Hokage mountain. "She also seemed to indicate that Uchiha Itachi-san had…taken advantage of you. I am uncertain of the veracity of this. Why? Because Uchiha Itachi-san hardly needs to take advantage of anyone to fulfill his sexual urges."

"…Well…okay," I say finally, unsure whether to take anything Shino says as a compliment or insult—par for the course, naturally. "So…you know what I n-need from you, r-right?"

"Of course," he says, and extends his arms.

The sight of the kikai skittering down his hands and onto the floor always gives me the creeping horrors, even though at this point I've seen it so many times I can pinpoint exactly when it's about to happen so as to avert my eyes and shiver without offending him. The tiny insects scuttle away into the Uchiha compound, and Shino, with his eyes closed, nods to let me know they've reached their destinations—one each inside all the houses along the eastern side of the complex, in about a seven-building radius from Itachi's own home.

I draw on the innate Hyuuga ability to manipulate the location and appearance of chakra for the next step. Having Hanabi for a sister, I've learned that this ability can be easily used in a variety of creative ways, including wrapping a chakra film around Neji nii-san so he can't touch anything for a day without incinerating it, placing sinister chakras on random Academy students so that Akamaru freaks out and alerts Kiba to nonexistent threats walking past the training grounds, and propelling oneself a few feet off the ground to reenact possession scenes from horror movies.

In this case, what I do is carefully extend the chakra field around each kikai and mold it slightly, so each individual kikai's chakra field, seen through a chakra-revealing lens—such as a sharingan, in this case—bears quite a resemblance to a six-foot-tall humanoid form.

Since I'm using the kikai's own chakra—which is actually Shino's, so it's still human chakra—for this, it doesn't cost me any chakra myself. It's like spreading existing butter in a thinner layer over bread. The humanoid forms created by this distorted chakra look pathetically weak, but it doesn't really matter, because all the sharingan users in the houses can see is that six-foot-tall humanoid blobs of chakra have inexplicably manifested themselves in their houses for no apparent reason, and that, more interestingly, these blobs of chakra appear to have no corporeal forms that would explain their entry or in fact existence in the first place.

I hear shouts.

"It l-looks like they f-fell for it," I tell Shino quietly, and he nods and commands, "Disperse."

The bugs scatter, and with them, a flurry of incensed Uchihas in hot pursuit of whatever invisible invaders they believe have just infiltrated their compound. Itachi's kikai, as planned, stays inside his house, effectively keeping him there.

And just like that, I have a deserted east wing.

The second person in Hanabi's maladjusted vision of a good plan displays her impeccable timing and arrives at that precise moment, waving what looks like a massive flail around and looking like she's just eaten an exploding tag.

"All right," snaps Konoha's resident mistress of all things sharp and dangerous, "where is he!"

"Tenten-san!" I greet, somewhat awkwardly as I have always found her rather intimidating. "Thank y-you for—"

"Just go, Hinata!" she growls, pressing what I need from her into my hands. "Grab him by the _balls_, and don't forget to bite—" are these comments related? I wince—"and remember, this will only work once, so use it when you see an opening. Oh, that piece of—a _child_, are you? The hell does that make him, a pedophile? Fucking men, I'm telling you—"

"Hinata," interrupts Shino, and I could kiss him, although that's really what got me into this mess in the first place, so I defer. "I believe you should leave. I am sure the other Uchihas will re-enter the complex soon after they unravel this ruse with the kikai—which will be soon. Why? Because it is a stupid ruse."

"R-right!" I squeak, and offer Tenten a shaky little smile. "W-well then…bye!"

**~X~**

Uchiha Itachi comes out of his house when I throw a shuriken at his window and it lodges itself in a protruding timber. A quick scope with the byakugan reveals that he's the only one home, which saves me a lot of time. He has apparently been sitting there sedately staring at the kikai-borne chakra ghost, under the correct impression that since it has no corporeal form it poses no threat to him and he should just leave it the hell alone and go about his business, a truth which, fortunately, the other Uchihas have proven unable to comprehend.

"Hinata-san," he says in some surprise, and even though I'm ostensibly irritated with him, I can't help but note that he really does look practically edible in his ANBU fatigues, which he hasn't bothered to change out of. Skintight black spandex doesn't work for everyone, but…he's not everyone.

That, at this point, is something I can say with complete certainty.

"Itachi-san," I grind out, channelling steadying waves of chakra to my throat and palate as Hanabi instructed, so that I don't stammer. It's a waste of chakra, so I usually don't do it, but according to her, this entire thing is being done to impress Itachi with my behavior as a proud kunoichi and this image is more important than any techniques I actually end up using. Supposedly, things like this are going to awe him into seeing me as an adult and starting a relationship with me.

It makes about as much sense as anything else that goes on in the heads of shinobi, anyway.

"I am glad you returned," Itachi says serenely. "In your hasty retreat, you forgot your clothes from last night."

_That's _why he's glad I came back?

Hanabi is so right. He deserves this. Even if I'm going to have to pay through the nose afterwards.

"I'm not here for my clothes," I say, relishing my stammer-free voice. "I'm here to let you know that I'm not a child, and that—that you can't treat a Hyuuga like a notch in your bedpost!"

And then I make the seals, slide into a stance I've been practicing for years, and cry, "_Hakke Sanjyuni Sho!" _

The yin-yang spins, the tenketsu appear like constellations on his body, and I lunge.

Itachi has the sharingan on in a second and darts away with effortless speed—which is fine, as I don't actually want to hit him, just to manuever him into place. I make a wide circle, pushing him out of his house and into the street, and I can practically see his mind work as Hanabi said it would.

"_He won't want to hurt you. He's not going to break out his strongest techniques."_

True to this assessment—going for intimidation above effectiveness, I suppose—he flexes his fingers and calls, "_Katon: Housenka no jutsu_!" He's an Uchiha, after all, and it's a very popular technique with enemies who are drastically below one's level.

Bullets of fire spout from his pursed lips and hiss as they soar towards me, and this is the opening I wanted; I yank the trip-wire attached to Tenten's rigged shuriken, popping open its arms and shooting the exploding tag inside straight into his door.

I duck. The Housenka hits the quiescent exploding tag. Itachi's eyes widen.

And the exploding tag, of course, does what exploding tags are supposed to do.

**~X~**

…No, actually. It doesn't.

What actually happens is that Itachi uses his horrifying speed to flip a few seals and articulate, "_Suiton: Mizurappa!" _and water explodes out of nowhere, dousing the Housenka bullets and eliminating them well before any actually reach the exploding tag. And then he turns on me and the tomoe in his eyes spin, and I belatedly remind myself that Uchihas aren't just good at fire techniques before I'm caught in the genjutsu.

I prepare myself for the worst. However, Uchiha Itachi, genjutsu master and famed sadist, does worse than the worst.

He defiles the entire concept of genjutsu.

He psychologically scars me for the rest of my life.

He does what in this case can only be accurately described as cheating.

He kisses me.

It's all tongue and warm sweet mouth and fingers tangled in my hair, a kiss like being bludgeoned over the head—and in the genjutsu, with every sensation heightened to a thousand times its ordinary potency, this is the sweetest kind of murder imaginable, but it's murder nonetheless. I completely fall to pieces against his chest. And in the real world, he slings me into his arms, carries me into the house, and deposits my limp form on a conveniently beckoning chair.

The absent Uchiha family members choose this moment to return, and Uchiha Mikoto and Uchiha Fugaku let their glances travel from me, to their bemused son, to the drenched exploding tag still quivering harmlessly in the wall. It doesn't take much strategical acumen, or in fact, any strategical acumen at all, to make the necessary connections.

I assess the situation, determine that this is an optimal time to faint, and do so without further delay.

**~X~**

When I open my eyes, I am forced to immediately shut them again out of sheer terror. I'm lying in the reclining chair with three—count them, _three_—Uchihas hovering around above me like a scene from the average Konoha female's fantasies gone horribly, horribly wrong.

"Hello," says Uchiha Mikoto kindly. "You seem to have quite an affinity for passing out in our home, Hinata-san!"

This is said in a remarkably civil tone considering she just caught me attempting to blow up her house.

"Kunoichi," cuts in Uchiha Fugaku, "we just caught you attempting to blow up our house."

I need to talk to Sakura about seeing if she can get me one of those tooth implants—you know, the kind where you bite down and poison fills your mouth and you die in an incoherent mess before anyone gets a chance to interrogate you or practically take your mental virginity via Hormones-no-Jutsu.

"Um," I begin, in what is already shaping up to be nothing more than a glorified progression of inarticulate squeaks.

Itachi, in all his psychologically manipulative sex-god glory, stares blankly at me and trundles off somewhere, presumably to refine his talents as a psychologically manipulative sex god.

"Well?" demands Fugaku, and although I'm not sure whether he's inquiring after the aforementioned attempted vandalism or the fact that I'm staring after his retreating son with a disgustingly vacuous look on my face, I choose to address the former, because really, there are some things that should not be discussed with parental figures under any circumstances, and the effect of ANBU spandex on certain notable parts of the body is one of those things.

I make a sad attempt not to say what I'm actually thinking and end up offering the witticism "Whoaglrog."

"She seems very tired, Fugaku," says Mikoto in a worried tone. "Aftereffects of genjutsu, from the looks of it. Did Itachi hit you with something, Hinata-san?"

My dignity is beyond low at this point. It is, in fact, rapidly approaching subterranean levels.

"She tried to blow up the house," snorts Fugaku. "I'm not surprised he hit her with something. What were you thinking, kunoichi? You have some petty vendetta to settle with Itachi, or what?"

"Fugaku!" chides Mikoto. "Hinata-san, if you are angry at Itachi for bringing you home last night, let me reassure you that nothing improper happened. I cared for you the entire night, and he slept in his own bedroom. In fact—"

"It's n-nothing like that, M-Mikoto-san!" I cry out, disturbed that this incredibly and actually unrealistically kind woman might find me ungrateful for her hospitality, which I am not, being ungrateful instead for the fiendishly conniving firstborn she unwittingly raised. "I know y-you took c-care of me, and I'm r-really thankful—and it wasn't the _whole house_, it was just a room or two…I was going to p-pay, and everything—"

"You were going to _pay?" _repeats Fugaku incredulously. "Why would you do it in the first place, then, kunoichi?"

"To h-humiliate Itachi-san and m-make him realize I'm s-strong!" I burst out, finally deciding to have at it and let the mortification commence. At least he's not actually in the room.

Unsurprisingly, he comes back into the room at this point. I ignore this with remarkable aplomb. It's clear to me at this point that there's something to Neji nii-san's ramblings about the vicious nature of fate.

"…I'm sure Itachi knows you are strong," says Mikoto uncertainly, proving once and for all that she clearly knows nothing about kunoichi or her son or in fact anything that's been going on in Konoha for the last few years. Fugaku scoffs at her and turns back to me.

"Why do you care, kunoichi? Enough to blow up a few of our rooms?"

"B-because he thinks I'm a ch-child!"

Mikoto casts Itachi a skeptical look. He stares back at her as if to indicate that he's not going to grant her an answer or even an emotion just because they have half a set of genes in common. Fugaku rolls his eyes.

"…would have been pretty humiliating, have to say, getting a wing of the house knocked out by a pissed-off Hyuuga girl. Kunoichi! I'll never understand them."

And then he stalks out of the room.

Mikoto seems to be struggling with a smile. Finally she crosses over to me and tucks some hair behind my ears, a fond gesture that makes me think she's probably done it before, maybe while I was sleeping drunkenly in her bed last night. The patience of this woman is truly mind-boggling. Then again, she probably has to deal with all sorts of unsavory characters showing up and vandalizing her home in impromptu spars with Sasuke, so one neurotic kunoichi on Itachi's tail can't seem like much.

"I think," she says, "that this is between you and my son. But perhaps a civil conversation, this time, and not a battle?"

Oh, the irony—and then she waltzes away after her husband and leaves me alone with her patronizing spawn.

He comes over and sits on the edge of my chair as if he owns the—never mind.

"Hinata-san," he says politely. "Would you like some tea."

The questionless question does not fail to register and I take the beverage he holds out. It's phenomenally good tea, probably because it's been steeping while I mindlessly spew my guts to his parents, and as such has had more time than it should to attain the level of perfection that seems to automatically associate itself with all things Uchiha Itachi. I sip it vindictively, insofar as tea can be sipped vindictively.

"Would you care to explain your actions."

I never know whether to say yes or no to statements phrased like this, so I just sulk. He smiles.

"I am not normally in the habit of agreeing with my father," he clarifies, "but I admit that I am also curious as to why you cared enough about my perceived condescension to attempt to vandalize my house."

"I w-wanted to vandalize y-your house so y-you'd have to say what h-happened," I say haughtily, "and so you'd h-have to tell people that y-you hurt a Hyuuga g-girl and she did this to y-you. And stop…s-saying that! It was only g-going to be a f-few rooms!"

He laughs, low and smooth, silky, slick. God, does he even realize what a walking estrogen hazard he is? "So it was; that was a rather small exploding tag. Sasuke, I must say, causes more property damage on a weekly basis."

"Your p-parents—"

"They are not angry, Hinata-san—simply perplexed. Now, if you would desist this evasion of the question…"

The fake haughtiness evaporates; I squeak and bury my head in my knees. There's nothing I can really say at this point; even _I'm _not sure why I was so intent on having him recognize me. I do know that what he said in the morning bothered me, though, and since this seems like a good start, I tell him that.

"I d-don't want to b-be a child to you," I say, probably the first really truthful thing I've said in this entire encounter. "I d-don't think—I don't think you would d-do what you d-did yesterday with a child. And I…I r-really liked it."

"Yes," he says seriously. "I have noticed that."

It's not mocking as it would be if anyone else said it, because he obviously knows this—he literally beat me with a single kiss, after all, even if it was a genjutsu kiss and as such technically doesn't count.

"Many kunoichi find me attractive," he says. "It is probably because I am."

Oh, for the love of—he is so _ridiculous_. Why does no one else seem to notice how inherently outrageous he is? In his own dysfunctional way, he's just as outlandish as Shisui. And in the rush of comprehension that comes with this thought, I blurt it out, like the emotionally unstable spazz that I am.

"You are," I say, careening wildly into verbal vomit territory, "b-but you're also immodest. And k-kind. And w-weird. And…considerately manipulative…manipulatively considerate—I d-don't know! And emotionally…de…deficient. And you…you d-drink strawberry m-milk!"

"I have already explained about the vitamin D," he says slowly, fixating on the one thing I knew he would fixate on.

"D-do you see what I mean?!" I shriek, flailing my arms around and stammering into overdrive at this point. "You're s-so _bizarre_, Itachi-san! Anyone else w-would understand by n-now that I don't w-want to be a child to you because I r-really like _you_, and n-not just your k-kisses and y-your nice toned chest—"

Okay, Hinata. Shut up.

"—and the w-way you don't say anything n-nice, but are nice anyway, w-without trying, and how you t-talk like you're forty y-years old, and h-how you d-don't actually r-realize how c-cool you are—"

Seriously, shut up.

"—and…and…I don't _w-want _to be a ch-child!" I finish lamely, practically dying at this point but plowing on in the most idiotic confession I have ever given anyone, even taking that abortion of a declaration to Naruto into account. "I w-want to be your_...g-girlfriend, _and all y-you can think about is the s-stupid strawberry m-milk!"

I shut up, several incriminating sentences too late.

He stares. Knowing him—and I realize I actually can say this, miracle of miracles—he's probably _still_ thinking about the strawberry milk. I should never have even brought it up in the first place.

Then he says, "You are certainly a child, Hinata-san. How else would you explain the idiotic ploy for my acknowledgment you engaged in today?"

Now it's my turn to stare. He slides down over the arm of the chair, where he's been sitting, and takes my teacup out of my hands as gently as you please.

"P-ploy—"

"Of course," he says reproachfully. "It _was_ childish."

This is a hint. Seriously, even I'm not stupid enough to misinterpret this kind of blatant suggestion. So I look up into his long-lashed eyes—he must wear mascara or have his makeup done by Shisui or something, honestly—and awkwardly make my way through "W-well, then…will you g-go out with m-me, Itachi-san?"

He tilts up my chin and kisses me, and it's not a genjutsu this time, so it definitely counts.

In more ways than one.

"I will repeat it once more, Hinata-san," he tells me smoothly. "You only had to _ask_."

**~X~**

_end_


	3. The One With the Dinner

**A/N**: Given that it's not like this story has any plot, I appreciate the requests/suggestions :) So if there's anything/anyone you'd like to see, don't be shy! I've also been asked if it's completed--it's not, I'll add one-shot chapters whenever I come up with sufficiently stupid material to cauterize everyone's brain cells.

**Warnings**: Crack, ninjaverse chick flick, crazyShisui, blah blah blah. It's also doubtful that ninja would refer to Faustian bargains or French maid outfits in daily conversation.

**Premise**: Now that everyone's favorite dysfunctional couple is official, I think we're due for an awkward formal dinner at Casa Hyuuga, don't you?

Enjoy! :D

* * *

The Noble House of Hyuuga is nothing if not psychotically efficient, so on the exact evening that Itachi and I come to our…understanding, a ceremonial scroll with a huge Hyuuga crest on it goes out to the Uchiha compound with an invitation—nay, a _compulsion_—to dinner the next day. The Noble House of Uchiha is nothing if not even more psychotically efficient, and as such replies that selfsame night in the affirmative.

"You should have expected that we would make an effort to acquaint ourselves with your young man," says my father blandly, as if _acquaint ourselves with _and _verbally castrate _are equivalent by any stretch of the imagination. I whimper at him.

"Oh, for heavens' sake, Hinata," he says in disgust. "It's only a formal dinner. I have also informed Uchiha Itachi that he may bring friends or family if he so desires, so that tension, inasmuch as it exists, may be alleviated somewhat."

_Alleviated_? I stare at my father, trying to ignore the undiluted horror oozing from every pore of my skin and rendering it slightly difficult to breathe.

"Father," I say, attempting to make him understand the truly appalling blunder he has committed. "Itachi's b-best friend is…Uchiha Shisui."

My father furrows his brow. This is a movement which has been known to precede the destruction of dwellings and lesser mortals.

"Uchiha…Shisui?"

I nod.

"Hmm…handsome head of curly hair? Mind-manipulation doryoku?"

_Handsome head of_—I nod again.

"Ah, yes. A fine lad."

My jaw drops. Unless he means 'fine' in some other sense of the word, which is admittedly applicable here, I am not at all keen to navigate the thought processes that led to the formation of this statement.

"Father…h-have you ever _met _Uchiha Shisui?"

He waves his hand dismissively. "Indeed, indeed. He was seven years old at the time, and your Itachi-kun was five. Model children. A credit to their clan."

I should say something, but "your Itachi-kun" effectively derails whatever this something is. My tongue flails around uselessly in my mouth, apparently under the delusion that this will result in the creation of appropriate words. But there are none, so I simply make the standard awkward bow. My father narrows his eyes.

"Hinata," he glowers, "is there something I should know?"

"N-no, Father. Nothing at all."

**~X~**

Everyone lines up in the Main Hall at precisely five-thirty, in order of height (not that this is at all wise, as the first thing any Uchiha clansman will see when he comes in is Hanabi, decked out in full Hyuuga regalia and dangling Hyuuga crests from every body part from which a crest can be dangled). Neji is right next to me, muttering things like "twenty-seven possible escape routes" and "snipers at the ready behind the façade" and generally being less than encouraging. Hanabi keeps shooting dark looks at his branch seal, ceremonially uncovered, although she promised never to use it again after an unknown incident involving copious amounts of sake and even more copious amounts of illegal genjutsu.

Interspersed randomly in the height order are Ino and Shino, who of all my acquaintances were deemed best at defusing and ignoring awkward tensions, respectively. Both of them are dressed for optimal damage control, in neutral formal kimono that sport the most unobtrusive clan crests possible. Of course, Ino's clan crest is a flower, so it's not as if there's any way to make this intimidating, but still.

A servant ushers the Uchiha entourage in at precisely five-thirty-two, and then, as those immortal words go, the trouble begins.

**~X~**

Everyone bows respectfully except for Shisui, who shunshins around hugging people like an idiot and probably offending enough minor Hyuuga to repopulate Konoha's missing-nin roster. I unfortunately am victim to one of these hugs, as is Neji, which is far more disastrous.

"Heeeeeeeeeey," ululates Shisui, nuzzling his nose in Neji's white haori. "Looking good, you, and is that—is your seal uncovered? Ohmigod, is it wrong of me to find that really hot?"

My father looks as if someone has stuffed a chidori down his nagajuban.

"Neji-kun, who is this?"

"You don't remember me, Hyuuga-sama? Uchiha Shisui!" He bows, making his silvery kimono flicker. He has at least made an effort to dress for the occasion, which is reassuring. "You came to the Academy when Itachi and I were little, gave us The Talk! I mean, you know, the _Dojutsu _Talk. Not, like, _sex. _Heh. That'd be a bit weird."

The pallor on my father's face cannot be considered healthy. "Ye…Yes, Shisui-kun. It is nice to see you again. And Itachi-kun, of course." They bow to each other. Itachi has exploited his living-sex-god potential possibly on purpose, as if to make me lose what little sanity I have left. Hanabi _whistles. _He nods gravely at her, cementing his social unflappability forever, and takes the appropriate seat at the series of low square tables—one place away from me, so as not to seem improper.

This is the opportune moment to say something meaningful and emotionally charged, yet subtle and endearingly demure enough to assert my status as a woman of truly impeccable breeding and class. By the time my mind processes all these conditions, however, words are already spewing out of my mouth.

"Itachi-s-san—"

"Yes?"

I analyze him maniacally for something to compliment him on and settle on his hair, which has been twisted into a high bun, done up with chopsticks and _little white flowers _dangling off the hair ornament. Someone has obviously spent a great amount of effort and a deficient amount of sense on this, because he looks like a geisha. It's ridiculous. I want to give him a shamisen and fantasize about him pouring me tea without getting his sleeves in it.

He blinks. "…Thank you, Hinata-san."

Oh my God, I did not—

Shisui snickers and elbows me; dear god, _why am I sitting next to him_? Why is he touching me? Why is he wearing the same perfume as Sakura? Why is he wearing perfume at all? "Ooh, kinky," he contributes, which Neji nii-san unfortunately hears as he slides into the seat next to mine, glaring fit to incinerate the air above us to Kirin-levels.

My life is filled with failure and trauma and witheringly attractive ANBU captains in near-geisha outfits, and how does this thought even exist without sending the universe into convulsions of total logic failure?

The tea is poured with ceremonial gusto, and everyone bows to the room at large and begins sipping austerely. It takes me one sip to realize that it is _not tea. _

"Neji nii-san!" I flail. "The servants—this is—is this s-_sake_?"

Neji takes a sip from his own cup and frowns at it. "No, Hinata-sama," he reassures me. "It is tea. Jasmine with a hint of ginger, if I am not mistaken."

Shisui laughs into his own cup. I whip around and stare at him. "Shisui-san—"

He waves his hand in much the same manner my father did earlier. "Relax, Hinata-chan! Just a blanket jutsu to lighten up the mood a little. The servants think it's tea, they think it's tea, so what does it matter? I left you and Itachi out, though, in case you feel the urge to merge or something. Alcohol, especially undiluted sake, doesn't do wonders for the—"

"_Shisui-san_," I mutter, "Do you know how many t-times this so-called 'tea' is going to be s-served during the c-course of this meal?"

"About fifteen, if I'm not mistaken," he chirps happily. "Why? Should I arrange for more? I can tweak the jutsu a little—"

"_NO!" _I shriek, and everyone stops sipping their sake and eyes me suspiciously.

Itachi comes to the rescue, like the shining white knight of my dreams he most emphatically is not. "I believe this would be an appropriate time for introductions, Hyuuga-sama. Not all of the members of my family are acquainted with yours. You know Shisui, of course—"

Shisui flashes a peace sign and says, "Damn straight!" which is not appropriate on about forty-seven different levels, but whatever.

"—and my younger brother, Sasuke, as well as my parents, who are engaged in police work tonight and regrettably could not attend. However, my…uncle…has graciously agreed to represent our clan elders in their stead."

I glance around the room and am stunned at the sight of a previously unnoticed man in a blue wave-pattern kimono, wearing a _mask _and absentmindedly stroking Shino's shoulder. They appear to be having a conversation, or something vaguely approximating it. Whatever. No one is running screaming from the room covered in insects. This is acceptable.

"Hello," says Itachi's uncle, and inclines his head. "Hyuuga-sama, I thank you for your hospitality. You may call me Tobi."

"Is that your name?" deadpans Hanabi.

"No."

"Then why—"

"Technically you may call me anything you like, little…girl-child, but I happen to prefer Tobi. It would be in accordance with manners and general decency to comply with that request."

"But that's stupid."

"Very well." He glowers dramatically. "I suppose you may use…Madara." A pause. "Which is also not my name."

"Or the name of the Uchiha clan founder," offers Itachi politely.

"There is that. You were always a bright boy, Itachi-kun, such associative powers—it is not as if I have any connection to Uchiha Madara."

"Thank you, ojii-san. And of course not. That would be ridiculous."

"Ridiculous," concurs my father.

"Ridiculous," agrees Ino feverishly.

"Ridiculous!" squeals Shisui, and thrusts his cup into the air, apparently under the belief that this is a toast of some sort.

Everyone sips their "tea" and mulls over all the dangerously flawed reasoning which may be actually warping the perimeter of the room. Then:

"Forgive me, Madara-san, but…why do you wear a mask?" blurt out about ten people at the same time.

"Madara," if that is in fact his real name, takes a few casual swallows through the ceramic of the mask, which is so mind-boggling that it surely constitutes some kind of thinly veiled threat, pun completely intended.

"Have you ever asked Hatake Kakashi that question?" he asks.

"N-no, but—"

"Ask him, and then ask me."

Silence.

Shisui jumps in to rectify the situation with "Ohmigod, one time, we ran into this guy in Kiri who wore a mask? Momochi Zabuza? Missing-nin? Except he was like, a member of the Seven Swordsmen too, which was kind of badass. Oh man, that was a bust—remember, Itachi? And there was that other guy…blue guy, kept hitting on you—"

"Kisame," says Itachi. The first course has arrived at this point and he carefully puts his hands together and intones his "Itadakimasu!" The guest of honor having begun, everyone rushes to follow suit.

"Were you on a mission?" asks my father, apparently determined to inject some shinobi credibility into the proceedings. The proceedings, predictably, thrash violently and expel this from their system in a messy and humiliating fashion.

"Sort of," says Shisui dreamily. "That was Itachi's experimentation phase—WINK, WINK—" he actually says the two winks—"so we'd just kind of snuck off for a little—"

"HAVE YOU TRIED THE PICKLED DAIKON, ITACHI-SAN?" screams Ino from all the way across the room. I mentally resolve to sneak her a lifetime supply of incriminating pictures of Sasuke, which I am sure I will be able to procure at some point if I get through this dinner without entertaining a nervous breakdown.

"I am in fact currently enjoying it," says Itachi graciously. "But thank you for your concern, Ino-san. Please continue, Shisui."

At this even Hanabi jumps in with a stupid conversation sidetracker, hers being something like "So do you think Orochimaru's tongue-thing is a jutsu, or some kind of Faustian bargain he made back when he was in Konoha?" Shisui grins and claps his hands, having foregone an inane topic of conversation for an even more inane topic of conversation. I watch them blither away at each other ("No, darling, tongues don't work like that. I've tried, and—"), completely lost for words.

Next to me, Neji is embroiled in a glowering fit which is no doubt making his fingers all pruny at the tips.

"Why is he here?" he hisses, as only a one-night-stand suddenly confronted with his erstwhile paramour at a formal dinner can hiss. "I thought this was just Itachi--"

"And family!" Shisui squeals. "And believe me. Itachi and I are _more _than family, darling." He leans behind me and somehow contrives to wrap his arm around Itachi's shoulder like an asphyxiative snake. I'm briefly aware that it should be my girlfriendly duty to halt this kind of lunacy before Itachi gently disentangles Shisui's arm and chides, "Shisui. Not at the table." He returns to his pickled daikon in a deranged, almost psychotic parody of normalcy.

My father, at this point, has veins I did not know existed standing up in his forehead. I'm honestly not sure if he has the byakugan activated or not. Ino, who when she so desires can be an absolute fount of small-talkative wisdom, derails the pending apocalpyse with, "So! Itachi-san! Why don't you tell us about some of the stuff you've done as an ANBU? I heard you took down an entire tribe of amazon female warriors in Suna with just a genjutsu--"

"That is correct," says Itachi politely. Shisui giggles, but this is routine, so everyone ignores it.

"Wow! Mind telling us what was in that genjutsu? I'd love to try that out!"

Itachi sets down his chopsticks and flutters his eyelashes weirdly, this being quite a feat, as they are so long he must have evolved special facial muscles just to lift them.

"I simply evaluated the deepest parts of their psyche to determine what it was they would find most weakening," he says.

"Ooh! What was that?" Ino leans forward, and even Neji nii-san looks interested. "It must've been something really good!"

"It was simple sensory overload work," dismisses Itachi.

"But to get them all down for the count like that--"

Shisui bursts out laughing.

"Ino," he says, "Seventy-two hours of Itachi in a french maid outfit, and trust me, you'd be down for the count too."

I try to tell myself that every person in the room is not currently picturing my significant other in a french maid outfit, but the fact remains that every person in the room is currently picturing my significant other in a french maid outfit.

"Cross-dressing is a common and very powerful fantasy present in the human sexual nature," explains Itachi, having epically misinterpreted the silence and suspicious nosebleeds from some minor Hyuuga who have nothing to contribute to the conversation. "For example, just now Hinata-san was telling me—"

The second course arrives. I send a prayer to every ancestor I have, and some I don't but with whom I may have taken a dip in the gene pool at some point in the past (it's anyone's guess why my eyes somehow flicker over to Madara as this thought crosses my mind). A servant lays out all the little lacquered dishes and everyone watches Itachi take his choice, which he does with true geisha loveliness, sweeping his kimono out of the way and even dabbing his lips gently with a handkerchief that is in some way concealed in his sleeve, possibly in geisha hammerspace where he's keeping his shamisen and the rest of his accoutrements _which I need to stop thinking about_.

"Isn't he just adorable?" Shisui stage-whispers to me. "I knew you'd like the flowers. I did them, you know! Couldn't go full-out, though, since he's got to impress your dad and all that—I remember when Itachi was a little kid, Obito-nii and I used to dress him up all the time in Mikoto obaa-san's old summer dresses, and he was so _cute_! Aww, c'mere, baby…"

Itachi obediently leans behind me and allows Shisui to pinch his cheek. His blank expression changes not a whit.

All these incestuous innuendoes and faintly disturbing childhood reminiscences are doing nothing to endear the Uchiha boys to my father, and what's worse, Shisui is actually _important _in this scenario, being The Best Friend as well as Itachi's…cousin…ex-fling…something. My own equivalents, across the room, look too panicked (Ino) inappropriately entertained (Hanabi) or engrossed in unfathomable conversation with Madara (…_Shino_?) to help me out of my predicament. But I do have one last mainstay, so when Neji leans over to me and says, "We _have _to do something about this," I'm too busy being grateful at the fact that _someone's _willing to bail me out of this rapidly sinking ship to pay heed to my common sense.

**~X~**

Shisui is naturally piqued when I activate my byakugan, as the other Hyuuga would be if they were not currently inebriated to within an inch of their lives thanks to his stupid trick with the tea. Activating the byakugan at a meal is one of the most sordid breaches of etiquette a clan member can commit, as it intimates that you are either planning to attack your guests, leer at them through their clothing, or both, none of which is advisable in a dining room. I determinedly do not look at Itachi, although my peripheral vision informs me that he has activated his sharingan in puzzlement and is eyeing me curiously in case I decide to do something abnormally stupid, which I have in fact already decided to do, not that he knows this.

"Go," whispers Neji. "I'll distract Itachi."

And he turns to Itachi and begins talking about the most obscure mission details anyone could possibly wrangle up, things like whether the tie of ANBU masks should be tied in the rabbit-goes-through-the-hole shoelace fashion or a bow made of two loops. Itachi, being inept at any social interaction short of extreme psychological manipulation, is all over this like a swarm of kikai on a missing-nin carcass, obviously under the delusion that it constitutes quality dinner conversation.

My father, naturally, joins in this conversation with great interest, it being perhaps the only one begun thus far that makes any sense to him.

"I believe I shall raise this at our next squad meeting," Itachi says seriously, fluttering a little hand fan—what am I saying? There is no hand fan. There is nothing that even vaguely approximates a hand fan. Am I under some kind of genjutsu? "It is unthinkable that shinobi of the Leaf should be so carelessly negligent of proper ANBU dress. It is most conscientious of you, Neji-kun, to institute this line of inquiry—"

I tear myself away from this with remarkable difficulty considering that it is a conversation about _nothing_ and turn my attention back to Shisui, who is brushing the veins on my temples with delicately concerned fingers.

"You know, I could give you some concealer for those, darling," he says in an undertone. "It's really kind of gross."

"Uh…" Just go along with it, Hinata, go along with it, it _is _gross. "Y-yeah, Shisui-san, you're right—"

Just hit two tenketsu points, and he'll _stop_ _talking _and eat his dinner quietly…

Unfortunately, this is Shunshin no Shisui we're talking about, and he is fast.

FAST.

Quick as a flash, which is technically what it is, he gropes around in his kimono sleeves and comes up with a little vial of concealer. He leans over and begins dabbing it onto my temples. I'm too busy fuming over the tenketsu point I _just missed_ as a result of his sudden movement to say anything, and apparently, my treacherous friends and relatives, all lolling about in a sake-fueled daze, are not going to be of any help whatsoever.

I uncurl my index finger and try again, this time jabbing right below the rib and nearly breaking my hand in the process.

"Hey!" says Shisui. "Ticklish there, don't—Hinata-chan? You okay?"

Is he wearing _armor?_

"Are you w-wearing _armor_?"

"Huh? Oh, no, that's—" He pulls the neck of his kimono away and peers down it. "That's just these."

It's a set of handcuffs. I don't even know what to say.

Madara, who has been chatting civilly with Shino all this time, looks over at this. "Shisui-kun," he says jovially, "how many times must I tell you to keep police business out of your pants?"

"Good one, ojii-san!" chirps Shisui, and they laugh uproariously and point at one another. "But you know, they do come in useful…"

Neji has stopped talking to Itachi and is looking over with the kind of blush that threatens to peel off his face and fry on the floor like an egg. This grabs Hanabi's attention as well.

"Cool," she says. "Leopard-print. Can I see?"

Shisui obligingly hands them over to the accompaniment of absolute pin-drop silence, silence which is then broken by my father rising to his feet. This situation cannot actually get worse. It makes my attempt to blow up Itachi's house look tame and civil.

"Enough," booms my father, and even with the sake-not-tea slopping out over the rim of his cup, he looks intimidating.

The situation just got worse.

**~X~**

"This dinner has become a farce," he roars, and the Uchiha contingent looks at him serenely, in that unruffled manner that all Uchiha seem to absorb along with their baby milk, assuming they do drink baby milk and not liquid essence of _what the hell?_, as might be expected. "I invited you here, Uchiha Itachi-kun, intending to ascertain your intentions with regards to my daughter. I do not appreciate this—" he waves his hand inarticulately in the direction of Hanabi and Madara, heads bent together over the leopard-print handcuffs—"in the slightest, and unless you are able to give me a single good reason why I should allow this dinner or in fact this relationship to continue, you may bid my daughter goodbye this very night!"

Shisui pats my hand reassuringly and I consider attempting my tenketsu scheme again, but it's too late. Everything is over unless Itachi can come up with some kind of good response, which at this juncture seems more unlikely than Neji succumbing to Shisui's—never mind.

"Well, Itachi-kun?" demands my father. "Why do you wish to court my daughter?"

"Don't worry," whispers Shisui. "I've gone over this with him a TON of times. He knows what he's doing."

Itachi fingers a tendril of hair that has come loose from his geisha bun. He eyes the rest of the room quietly, seemingly within deep contemplation, and then, gaze flickering towards Shisui and me briefly for approval, holds forth with, "She is one fine piece of ass."

**~X~**

Of the twenty-seven possible escape routes mentioned by Neji, the one most appealing at this moment is seppuku.

**~X~**

Shisui groans and slaps his forehead. "Itachi, sweetie," he hisses. "That one was for your _ANBU squad, _remember? Try again."

What? What? How is Shisui suddenly an authority on guy-talk?

He catches my eye, taps his temple, and mouths "sharingan." Okay. Fine. Why couldn't his esteemed cousin, prodigy of Konoha, have used the sharingan to copy common sense?

Madara says something like, "A credit to my teachings, Itachi-kun" and Hanabi whacks him with one of her dangling Hyuuga crests. My father, on the other hand, is livid. This will all end in heart attacks, I just know it. I spring up, my entire life condensing to a little coil of abject misery in the pit of my stomach, and dash to his side. "Father," I begin, "I—"

"Wait, Hinata-san."

"Uchiha freaking Itachi, just shut your mouth," snaps my sister. "You haven't made this any easier for yourself, so just—"

"Let him speak."

Everyone stares at Shino, who just _spoke_. Voluntarily. Cutting off my sister, which is like biting the ear off a rampaging wildebeest.

"Let him speak," he continues. "Why? Because none of you have given Uchiha Itachi a chance to express himself."

"Shino-kun!" roars my father. "This entire meal has been an _exercise _in self-expression for the boy! How dare you say such a—"

"No, it has not, Hyuuga-sama," says my teammate firmly. Cutting off Hanabi and my _father_. It's funny that I never noticed his latent suicidal tendencies before, but I never noticed them in myself either, and they're definitely coming to the fore now. "He has been doing exactly what he has been told to do by his best friend—" a dark glare at Shisui, who shrinks into himself—"and his uncle—" at Madara—"but not himself. Let him speak freely."

"Thank you, Shino-kun," says Itachi calmly.

"If he isn't wise enough to follow his own instincts on such a thing, how can we let him be with Hinata?" snaps Neji, uncaring at this point that he is technically insulting his employer. "He is—"

"—a young man the likes of none other in Konoha," says Shino, cutting him off and completing his hat trick. "I approve of his relationship with my teammate. If you are Hinata's well-wishers, you will no doubt do so as well."

"When he takes advice from these _imbeciles_?" shouts my father, gesturing towards Madara and Shisui in rage. "Why would he even do such a thing?"

"Because I am well aware that I possess no skill in such situations," breaks in Itachi suddenly, "and it is a truth known to every ANBU that the most important missions should not be undertaken by oneself."

The room quiets. Even Hanabi looks slightly stricken.

Shisui nods encouragingly, and for once Itachi smiles slightly at his cousin before turning away from him entirely to face my father.

"Your daughter is important to me," he says. "Important enough that I am willing to make a fool of myself if it will ensure that I may stay with her, as far as she desires it." He reaches up and removes the flower hairpin from his hair, and the entire bun falls down into his ordinary ponytail.

Everyone is staring at him, but he continues.

"I wish to court Hinata-san because she is admirable to me," he says. "She has thus far told me exactly what she wishes of our interaction, without any of the dissemblance I find prevalent in encounters with kunoichi. This is something worth emulating, therefore, I will do the same thing now."

He pauses, lowering his eyelashes. "I do not know if you have noticed," he confides, "but I have slight difficulties in social interactions."

There is a fit of coughing that suddenly seizes most members of the room, immediately and miraculously cured by a vicious panoramic glare from Shisui.

"Therefore," says Itachi, "Hinata-san's honesty is something that…interests me. And if I am to court a young lady of such moral caliber, I must be honest with you as well, Hyuuga-sama: I will continue to court your daughter even without your permission, if it becomes necessary."

My father picks his jaw off the floor and manages to somehow rejoin it to his face. Awkwardly, like a turtle trying to jump over the Hokage Tower, he sets his hand on Itachi's shoulder.

"…Itachi-kun," he says, "it will not be."

**~X~**

Many of the Hyuuga see the Uchiha family members off with surprisingly sincere exclamations that they should all do this again sometime. Madara and Hanabi are seen shaking hands, which should be inherently terrifying, but somehow fails to make a dent in the glassy sheen of utter and complete beauty that has somehow descended over the whole night. My father even gives Itachi an awkward somewhat-hug as he makes his way to the door (a hug Itachi only gets through by discreetly sharingan-ing Ino hugging someone else goodbye at the other end of the hall). Hugs are against formal protocol, naturally. So are a lot of other things.

Shisui is wiping away a tear. "Oh, wasn't that just beautiful, Neji-kun?" he trills. "He's my grasshopper, you know! I _raised _him!"

"_No_," snaps Neji. "You are two years older than him, and if my assumptions are correct, attempted to molest him at some point during his formative years."

"Okay, no," protests Shisui, "there was mutual molestation going on, and he totally enjoyed—wait a second, are you _jealous_?"

"On account of a lout who goes about accruing one-night stands with which to pad his—" Neji's eyes flicker downwards, but I dutifully ignore this for fear of mental scarring—"roster…of conquests? I think not—"

Shisui stops dead in the hallway, knocking over a plant which is righted again before it so much as hits the ground.

"One-night stand?" he gasps. "ONE-NIGHT STAND?"

My father is looking over, and there are hairline fractures making their way across the happy glasslike surface of the night—

And then Shunshin no Shisui draws back and clocks Neji right in one of his precious eyes.

"ONE-NIGHT STAND?" he is shrieking. "How dare you? Just because _you're _still a closeted tight-ass—although you're not actually, if you want to be literal about it—you just _assume _that? If anyone wanted it to be a one-night stand, it was you, Hyuuga Neji! I HATE you!"

And then he peels out of there, screaming.

Neji boggles after him, and then, unexpectedly, my father stalks up to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. There is so much hand-shouldering going around tonight that I feel actively drowned in testosterone, which is unfitting given the participants of said hand-shouldering.

"Neji-kun," he says. "Did you indeed tell Uchiha Shisui-kun you would prefer to keep your relationship with him limited to one night?"

Neji looks shamefaced. "I didn't," he says, "It was just an…assumption…"

"I would suggest you correct that assumption," says Itachi, coming up behind him with his ANBU stealth on full display, or not, as it were. "Shisui can be somewhat insecure."

Neji swallows and, to everyone's surprise, dashes off after Shisui.

My father and friends gamely congregate on Madara, who suggests a drink (blithely disregarding all the ones they've already had) and leads them back into the house. This leaves Itachi and myself alone in the hallway, eyeing each other apprehensively.

"I," I begin impressively, "I…"

"There is no need to thank me," he dismisses. "I am improvisationally gifted as well as exceedingly attractive."

And immodest, but there is no denying this. I smile. "That is t-true."

He looks thoughtful. "Are you indeed sexually excited by geisha accessories?"

Mood killer, thy name is Uchiha Itachi.

"Um," I say. "N-not really, j-just with you."

"Ah," he says. There is some silence. Then he says, somewhat puzzled, "Shisui assured me that you would be, and that after dinner you would attempt to 'jump' me, whatever this means. It sounds unpleasant."

I start laughing against my will. "W-well," I say. "Shisui is r-right about that."

"Really."

"Y-yes," I say.

And then I totally jump him.

**~X~**

_end_


	4. The One With the Date

**A/N:** A lot of you wanted to see Sasuke's reaction to this whole thing, so this chapter involves funtiems with baby bro!

Also, not quite the place for pimping, but I CANNOT CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT: sign-ups for the LJ community bitter_nakano's summer exchange open today! If you like Itachi/Shisui, we like you, so come sign up!

**A/U Elements: **non-massacre AU

**Warnings:** CRACK. Profanity, Shisui, stupidity.

**Premise: **Have they actually gone on a date yet?

* * *

I am having a conversation with Uchiha Shisui. This activity is probably what they had in mind when they coined the term "extreme sports."

"—a condom! No erection without protection, just repeat that after me—"

I of all people understand that cousins in old clans feel the need to take an unhealthy interest in others' private lives, but this is ridiculous.

"—have any sexy lingerie? I could lend you some? God, if I had your figure—"

"Or, you know, her gender," deadpans Hanabi, who has come into the kitchen to grab a tube of yogurt. Shisui's lip wobbles crazily and I look reproachfully at Hanabi, while sort of dragging my hand over Shisui's shoulder in something that vaguely approximates a comforting motion. He pats my hand and blinks either actual tears or fairly runny facial glitter away from his eyes—it's hard to tell, and sadly, either is distressingly plausible.

"I know I'm beautiful," cries Shisui bravely. "And speaking of_—except not_—I didn't see _you_ around when we left last night, Hanabi-chan!"

"Don't call me that," says Hanabi, slamming the fridge door shut. "And yeah, I went to bed early."

"_I knew it_!" shrieks Shisui, waving his arms. Hanabi dodges adeptly and treks back across the linoleum, apparently unruffled.

"I d-don't understand," I say, although a miraculous sense of intuition that I have developed over the last few days cautions me that I'm much, much better off not understanding. "What's wrong w-with going to b-bed earl—"

Shisui practically leaps over the countertop so that he is almost literally in my face, or at least my ear. I can feel my semicircular canals rupturing at his increased proximity.

"_Madara ojii-san_ _went to bed early too!" _he hisses. I gawk at Hanabi. She shrugs and leaves. I can hear her slurping her yogurt.

"Shisui-san…" I say, not quite sure how to phrase _Please don't intimate that my sister and your uncle are involved in dodgy, possibly illegal relations _in a polite manner or in fact any manner that doesn't cause my brain to hemhorrage. "P-please don't—"

"Ohmigod, I know. Keeping it in the family, amirite? But Madara ojii-san's nice, it's okay. He's also really good at—"

"_Shisui-san_!"

"I was totally going to say inter-clan relations," finishes Shisui, smirking. "In all kinds of ways." He fixes a few stray curls of hair with typical limp-wristed aplomb and rises to his feet.

"So we're on for seven tonight?"

"Y-yes," I manage

"Great! Be excited! It's going to be _fabulous._"

He blows a kiss, sashays halfway across the kitchen, and flickers out of sight.

I tell myself quite assertively that excited is what I'm going to be, and _all _I'm going to be. There is _no possible way_, after all, that my first actual date with Itachi can go any worse than the hookup, the morning after, and the clan dinner that preceded it. The slight nausea and persistent desire to faint is just a sort of…manifestation of that excitement.

Really.

**~X~**

It wasn't my idea to double with Shisui and Neji. It was Shino's. His reasoning, inasmuch as it can be called such a thing, was that Shisui is so outrageous that Itachi and I won't actually have to worry too much about what the two of us are doing, and thus can avoid awkward moments of the sort that theoretically exist on First Real Dates. Shino knows a great deal about awkward moments, as I imagine someone who routinely has to use phrases like "I have already told the termites to stay out of my belly button" must, so I've deferred to his expertise on this one. It doesn't mean it's reassuring.

For one thing, this means I'll be on this date with _Neji_, which is horrifying on so many levels I see no need to enumerate them. For another, it means that Itachi and Shisui are going to attract unwelcome attention, since putting them together in a closed space seems to elicit even more total estrogen failure than ordinary. For the last…well…_Shisui_.

Still, Neji and I show up at the Uchiha compound at precisely two and a half minutes to seven. I suspect masochism is included somewhere in the Hyuuga genetic makeup.

"Shouldn't _they _h-have c-come to pick us up?" I ask.

Neji glares at me. "I am _not_," he snaps, "_getting_ _picked up _by Uchiha Shisui."

There is no tactful way to mention that it's a bit late for that, so I don't. Itachi gestures to us from the porch steps. He's wearing civvies. I miss his black spandex for several unmentionable reasons, but he's compensated for this by rigging his civilian clothes with more fishnet than is logically necessary.

"Hinata-san," he says, rising to his feet, and I feel a horrible stupid smile glopping across my face like a demented amoeba. As disconcerting as this date is, it's still a date with Uchiha Itachi, who is technically _my boyfriend_, and this thought makes it impossible to feel anything but a little bit giddy. That and lightheaded, but this is negligible.

"Shisui should be out in a few moments," says Itachi, bowing politely to Neji.

"What's he doing?"

"His makeup."

Neji changes the subject so quickly he nearly gives the conversation whiplash. "Where are we going?"

"The Laughing Kunai," says Itachi, naming a rather posh restaurant in the entertainment district. It sounds dubious, but Hanabi informs me that a restaurant's degree of swank is directly proportional to the ridiculousness of its name. "Shisui was hoping to go the Tsukuyomi afterwards, but we decided you might like to see a Kabuki instead. They are doing after-dinner showings of _The Founding of Konoha _this month."

I'm surprised at the level of idiocy that is _not _present in this itinerary. It's not as if Uchiha Itachi is cognitively deficient or anything, but after his awkward alienation of common sense at The Dinner Party That Shall Never Be Spoken of Again, I've begun to develop a theory that he double-wraps his social competence and stashes it in his ANBU cubby with his mask, donning it about as often. But the plan is solid. Dinner and a show is comfortingly…civilian. There is no strawberry milk involved. There are no explosives. There is no Madara or Hanabi. Most importantly, _there are no Raikiri Daiquiris_.

My hopes of have a normal evening out for once soar. Kabuki shows are usually all-day affairs, but shinobi rarely have time for this kind of thing, so the theater downtown occasionally does special shortened shows for its honorable ninja citizenry. I've been wanting to see _The Founding of Konoha _for a while, too, so this is a pleasant surprise.

Neji apparently doesn't share this opinion. "Isn't that basically the Uchiha clan obsessing about itself?" he says suspiciously, apparently determined to make up for the sheer fact of his presence at this date by acting as hostile as possible.

"Yes."

"…Why would we want to see that?"

"We simply assumed, given your sexual proclivities—" begins Itachi, seeming genuinely puzzled. He has a point about this, but before Neji can say anything we spot Shisui flickering in intervals down the street, wearing exactly the same fishnet shirt as Itachi, but covered in silver sequins. This doesn't surprise me. Neither do the body tattoos. Or the special-import Iwa manbag in fake alligator.

The Uchiha fan bling is nowhere to be seen, so we can all consider Shisui's outfit a success.

"Helloooo, darlings!" trills Shisui, pecking the air next to Itachi's cheeks, then mine, then Neji's. Upon reflection, he seems to think better of this and _launches _himself at Neji, giving him a kiss that I'm fairly sure ups the rating of this entire evening before anything that even happened. "I'm so sorry I'm late, my garter belt just wasn't—well anyway, excited? _The Founding of Konoha_'sa _great_ show! Remember, Itachi? We performed that when we were kids—something like three years old," he explains sotto voce. "I was Uchiha Madara and had to ride the Kyuubi, which was some neighbor's dog, and let me tell you, that dog was _not _housetrained. Itachi was Shodaime-sama! _So cute_, right? Weren't you cute, Itachi?"

"I was cute," attests Itachi gravely. "My armor was made of cardboard."

This is cute. I have to physically bite my lip to prevent the inane squeals from escaping like a bunch of crazed hamsters.

Maybe—just maybe—this evening might go reasonably well.

**~X~**

The Laughing Kunai is a fairly upscale restaurant situated between a dress shop and what seems like a glittery casino. I'm not familiar with either of these buildings, since kunoichi almost never enter the entertainment district unless it's to pose as a society woman and kill someone—which happens much more frequently than one might expect, but is an experience that I, fortunately, have never had.

"Civilians are so much cooler than, like, _anyone _I know," says Shisui, as we head inside. "Yeah, hi! Table for four, please?"

The maitre'd just stares at him.

"Um…"

"It is a Saturday night, young man," says the maitre'd, sounding as if he's trying to get the words out past a dead rat. "Do you have a reservation?"

"…Sure! Under 'Uchiha!'"

"Hm. I'm afraid I don't see—"

"I _said," _says Shisui, and his sharingan begins to spin lazily, "_under 'Uchiha_.' See it now?"

"Why…why, yes," the man says suddenly. "Surprising…I…didn't notice it before."

It's not surprising at all. He's staring at a lamentably tacky souvenir matchbook with _The Laughing Kunai—Look Sharp! _printed on it. It also happens to be upside down.

As we're escorted to "our" table, he quite seriously wails "_Taste the rainbow!_" after us.

"Do you have to do that every time you use that technique?" asks Itachi irritably.

"God, _yeah_?" replies Shisui. "It's hilarious."

"Quite," mutters Neji.

I should probably say something about shinobi and dates at this point.

There are a lot of considerations that need to be taken into account when going on a date with a shinobi. One of these considerations is that shinobi are, to put it mildly, hair-trigger paranoid. Even the lazy ones, like Nara Shikamaru. Itachi, for instance, probably wouldn't notice a concept such as _tact _or _humor _if it projected itself onto the moon and controlled him via illegal genjutsu, but he startles noticeably when a particularly subtle waiter pops up to present us with the drink menu. By "startles," I mean "goes into full-on battle mode." Fortunately, for Itachi, this merely involves activating his sharingan and staring fixedly at some point above his victim's shoulder. This is oddly terrifying; I have no idea why. It may have something to do with his eyelashes, which he probably dips in human growth hormone every morning before applying his mascara—oh my god, shut up, Hinata, _shut up._

"Calm down, sweetie," says Shisui soothingly; whether to the gibbering man or to Itachi or to my internal monologuing demon I'm not sure. "What do you all want to drink?"

"No one is having _anything _alcoholic," says Neji immediately, and Shisui pouts and latches onto his arm.

"I'll have a l-lemonade," I say, making a mental note to do something extremely nice for Neji when we get home.

"Fabulous!" says Shisui, and the waiter scuttles off like a spooked crustacean. "So! How are you guys tonight? I'm _so_ glad we could do this! I think this is Itachi's first date, right?"

"Third," says Itachi.

"Aww, you grow up so _fast_—"

For a moment it feels like someone's blown up a balloon inside my stomach and just sort of left it there to pursue…whatever activities balloons pursue. It takes me another moment to realize that this feeling vaguely approximates what might come sort of kind of close to _jealousy_, which makes me feel like a horrible person. Itachi is twenty-one, the most desired shinobi in Konoha by anyone in possession of gray matter and two X-chromosomes—actually, scratch that last—and he even looks good in black spandex. It's actually very surprising he hasn't had _more_ dates in his lifetime.

"—didn't know you'd had three?" Shisui is ranting. "With _whom_? Does that time when we—"

"No."

"What about when we—"

"Not exactly."

"Not even when we—"

"I do not believe so."

"So _tell_!"

"Asuma-senpai danced with me at a spring festival once," admits Itachi.

We're all stunned. Even Neji is trying to pretend he isn't wildly and indecently interested in this piece of information.

"_Why_?" gapes Shisui.

Itachi shrugs and takes a sip of water. "He thought I was Kurenai-senpai. The lighting was bad."

"_Ohmigod_, what! So why didn't you leave, you nut?"

"I was curious," says Itachi. "I have heard people enjoy dancing at spring festivals. And _you_ were behind the goldfish stand with Hatake Kaka—"

"_All right, enough about that_!" squeals Shisui, flailing around with his juice and nearly causing a disastrous incident involving broken glass and eyes and copious amounts of screaming. "Not in front of the _babies_! Who was the other one?"

"Mitarashi Anko-san."

"_Itachi! _Naughty boy!"

"She wanted to celebrate my initiation into ANBU," says Itachi. "We ate dango and went to a sumo tournament. We were asked to leave. Apparently one is not allowed to partake in sumo wearing fishnets, and while Anko-san was willing to remove her shirt, I was not."

Neji and I look at each other.

"I am sure Hinata-san is not interested in this," Itachi dismisses. This is a scurrilous lie. "Shall we talk about something else? Recently I have initiated a campaign to re-allow nail polish inside ANBU headquarters—"

One of the things I have never particularly understood about my fellow females is their high tolerance for men who are, while attractive, exceptionally boring. Not that _Itachi_ is boring, but I don't know why anyone would be interested in this nail polish information except Shisui, who is all over it like Jiraiya-sama on an underage girl or green spandex on an appendage that should not be well-outlined or some equally unappealing metaphor. At this point I suddenly understand that it's because it gives one extended opportunities to stare and overanalyze things while the object of observation…talks about boring things, I suppose. So I stare at Itachi. In particular, his cheekbones.

Itachi has lovely cheekbones, high and smooth as if they've been carved into his face—which is a definite possibility considering the two long scars that snake down his cheeks. They really are incredibly sharp, which makes me wonder if the real reason he never carries any weaponry with him is because he assaults people with his cheekbones. It's not hard to imagine. I picture him shoving his face into someone's—okay, fine, maybe it's a little hard to imagine.

"Hinata-sama!"

I startle. Luckily, in my case, this means that I just stutter and look around wildly, and no one undergoes psychological trauma or anything like that.

"Itachi-senpai's talking to you," says Neji, giving me a funny look.

"I approve of th-the nail p-polish," I gush immediately. "I l-like purple…"

"I am glad to hear it, but I was not asking about that," says Itachi, lifting one eyebrow and causing my stomach to dribble out of its allocated cavity and slosh around on the ground in ecstasy. "I was asking if you would mind using your byakugan to assess the street outside briefly."

"Um…_ byakugan!"_

There is only a single flare of chakra outside strong enough to pose any threat to anyone, a blue chakra tinged with red at the edges and belonging to someone about sixteen years old. It doesn't seem to be doing anything. Just standing outside the restaurant and waiting. I report this back to the table and Shisui rolls his eyes.

"Ohmigod," he says. "Are you _serious_?"

"What?" asks Neji.

"Sasuke," Itachi answers. "He was sulking more than usual when we left. I had suspected he might show up arbitrarily."

"So why didn't you tie him up or something?" demands Shisui. "Didn't I leave you those handcuffs last time?"

"I gave him strawberry milk," says Itachi in a tone just this side of defensive. "It is usually an effective distraction."

I don't understand the Uchiha. Seriously, I don't. I don't understand why they're the most feared clan in Konoha. I don't understand why so many people want to procreate with them. I don't understand their creepy fixations on everything ranging from strawberry milk to incest and _how can these terms even belong together in a sentence_, oh my god.

"What now?" snaps Neji. "I didn't come here to be attacked by…Uchiha Sasuke."

"Of course not, pookie," gushes Shisui, practically pouring himself over Neji and letting his hands shunshin into places I have no interest in knowing about. "_No one_ attacks my Neji-kun except—um, I mean. But _seriously_, Itachi…not cool."

"I apologize," says Itachi, and he looks genuinely concerned, by which I mean his eyelashes are perhaps a bit more droopy than usual. "Sasuke has never been receptive to the idea of my acquiring a girlfriend."

"Sasuke is a jealous little brat. You should make out in front of him," says Shisui. "Worked on my older sister. After she finished having a nervous breakdown."

"She had a nervous breakdown because you were seeing Orochimaru-sama at the time," says Itachi, ignoring the way Neji's face turns the color of regurgitated carpet. "Neji-kun and Hinata-san are not nearly as offensive."

I'm flattered. Maybe.

"In any case," continues Itachi. "It might be wise to head to the theater immediately. He will not be expecting that. I believe he is standing outside waiting to fight someone. It is his way of coping with situations. Once he and Naruto-kun had a fight on the roof of the hospital."

The really appalling thing is that he says this almost fondly.

"Just because that's what he does on _his_ dates," mutters Shisui. "All right, fine—he doesn't know where we're going, right?"

"No."

"_Fabulous_. We should be able to shake him off. Split up, guys. Hinata-chan—sorry about this. We'll pick up something to eat after the show, okay?"

I'm not worried about food. I'm too busy being worried about getting _murdered by Sasuke_, so I just nod dully at him.

"Let's go, then, chickies," says Shisui. "Goddamnit—this is going to _ruin_ my shoes, isn't it?"

**~X~**

We decide to take the rooftops. It's not clear to me why shinobi find this a prudent idea, because as I do it, various civilians stop their mundane tasks to look up at me and point and leisurely say things like "Look, there's a kunoichi jumping across the rooftops!" which is not in any way conducive to my stealthy escape, but this is standard protocol and standard protocol clearly needs to be followed in this case or I'll probably go insane. Suddenly Sasuke _appears in front of me_ with a disturbing speed he must have copied from his cousin, and I nearly plunge headfirst off a particularly slippery stile. I catch myself. Then I look at his furious red eyes and consider jumping off it anyway, because death would probably make this situation more bearable.

"S-Sasuke-kun!" I whisper, trying to sound as if we've just coincidentially met. On a rooftop.

Stranger things have happened.

Honestly, this entire situation is mind-boggling, but not wholly unexpected. Ninja tend to equate acceptance with defeat; it's true, so if you go out with a shinobi you should automatically expect to be attacked by maniacal ex-girlfriends (Ino stalked Temari all the way to Suna and lived in her basement) or ultra-possessive best friends (anyone who tries to pick up Sakura has to go through Naruto first) or insane family members (I think Hanabi actively bit Kiba at some point). What goes on in these parties' heads is a mystery. Sometimes they're jealous that someone is taking up their Most Precious Person's time. Sometimes they just want to prove that you're not good enough for the aforementioned person. Sometimes they just have such serious clinginess issues that it's best to back away slowly and remember what we learned at the Academy about dealing with rabid animals.

So really. I should've expected that Sasuke would pop out of the woodwork and harass me at some point. If the descriptors "maniacal," "ultra-possessive," "insane," and "clingy" apply to _anyone_, after all, they apply to Uchiha Sasuke in relation to his brother.

"It's a n-nice night," I gibber valiantly, inasmuch as anyone can gibber valiantly, and Sasuke just _looks _at me. It's horrifying. He and his brother have the same freakish borderline-psychotic stare. "Are y-you just taking a st-stroll—"

"No."

I begin the process of slowly dying in graduated increments.

Many people in Konoha seem to harbor the belief that Uchiha Sasuke and I would make an excellent couple. I'm not sure who these people are. I've never met them. They have clearly never met me either, or for that matter, _Sasuke_, who is currently eyeing me as a vicious blue shark-humanoid missing-nin might eye a succulent jinchuuriki in possession of a few spare body parts, and I don't even want to puzzle out why my brain is presenting me with these nonsense images at a time when I need it to function properly. Trauma. Trauma is probably responsible for most things. Such as global warming. Oh god, I've lost it. I'm nauseous. I'm going to throw up my lemonade all over Sasuke.

"W-well, I'll just be g-going over h-here, then—" I say uselessly, and then Sasuke opens his mouth and ups the _unadulterated lunacy _quotient of this conversation to alert levels.

"Fight me."

"_What?"_

"Fight me!" he stresses, looking slightly crazed. "Do you not understand speech?"

I almost reply "no" because I'm too busy composing my will in my head to listen to what he's saying. It's surprisingly easier to stay calm when I focus my energies on whether the lavender high-heeled geta should go to Ino or Shisui.

"W-_why_?" I manage to warble. "I d-don't—"

"You can't be nii-san's girlfriend," he snaps. "It's just not right. Nii-san's the most powerful shinobi in Konoha."

_What_? _Why_? What am I even supposed to say to this?

"I don't have all day!' yells Sasuke. "Are you going to fight me or not?"

_Um, no_. "O-okay…"

"_Katon: gokakyu no jutsu!" _

I dodge. Sasuke sets a weathervane on fire. This is so stupid. We're in the entertainment district, it's something like eight-thirty at night, and Sasuke is causing property damages. I don't think insurance covers these circumstances. We're both probably going to be hauled into the Hokage's office first thing tomorrow morning for questioning. If there is a tomorrow morning.

Another burst of fire lights the tiles beneath me and I leap to the side and peel away down the center of the roof, wildly making my hands into some sort of lame water jutsu that won't do much, given the circumstances. Sasuke shoots a few Housenka bullets at me and singes the ends of my hair.

Weirdly, the only thing that crosses my mind is that I'm wearing Hanabi's dress. If he messes up Hanabi's dress, there will be no corner of the universe remote enough to hide me from her wrath. Seriously, the reason Neji is so messed up has nothing to do with the curse seal; it's more a function of his untoward interest in Hanabi's clothing.

I can't get close enough to jyuuken Sasuke because he's spewing fire everywhere like a dragon with the worst haircut known to dragons or haircuts or just worst things in general, so I settle for crouching behind a random chimney stack and casting horrified looks at him. He's pacing. Any moment, he's going to start monologuing, which I'm counting on to buy me some time.

"Don't hide!" shouts Sasuke. "You're the most incompetent kunoichi in our year! This is a disgrace—"

I whimper and knock my forehead against the bricks of the chimney. Shisui was right; Itachi should've restrained him or something. Sasuke is a menace. And then, at the thought of Shisui and his advice, fireworks go off over my head.

This is so incredibly embarassing. But "embarassed" is preferable to "catatonic."

Mostly.

**~X~**

Kurenai-sensei has a few tips for casting genjutsu on sharingan users. They are, in order of importance:

-Hide before doing it, so that they don't know where to direct their eyes.

-Stay out of range so that you don't get charbroiled before you accomplish anything.

-Check to make sure you are not suffering head wounds.

-Use a genjutsu that shocks or disconcerts, so that you can have it catch hold in the moment of surprise that will inevitably ensue.

Her tips are generally good. The only sharingan user she's ever failed to cast a genjutsu on is Itachi, because he's so socially questionable that nothing ever surprises him.

His brother, fortunately, is a different story. And Sasuke is very, very much surprised when I fling my chakra wide from behind the chimneystack and treat him to a beautiful full-color rendering of…well, of what exactly Itachi and I did in the hallway after the clan dinner yesterday.

Shisui is clearly wise beyond everyone's understanding, because it turns out Sasuke totally has a nervous breakdown too.

**~X~**

Well, to be fair, there's no nervous breakdown. Just a lot of wincing and twitching. Sasuke falls dramatically to his knees and claws at his eyes, yelling "No, nii-san, get away from her!"

"All right, Hinata-san," says a voice very close to my ear, making me jump, "that is enough."

I shriek, and Itachi puts his hands together and says "_Kai!_" before striding over to his hyperventilating brother.

"Sasuke. Stop that."

Sasuke stops, just like that. I actually feel sort of bad for him, crouching there on the roof tiles and casting furious glares at Itachi while simultaneously crawling towards him like an abandoned cat. Itachi dusts a bit of soot off his shoulder and says, "What was your thought process?"

He's being very generous to give him the benefit of the doubt that there _was _a thought process involved.

"You can't date her, nii-san! She can't even fight—"

"I believe she just won your match."

Sasuke's cheeks go a few degrees off magenta, and his expression goes a few degrees off 'contrite.' "That was—I mean—cheating—"

As if his own brother didn't use the same trick on me. Not that he knows this, or I might reconsider that "jumping off the roof" technique.

"Sasuke," says Itachi tonelessly. "Are you jealous?"

"Nii-san!"

"I do not mean that you wish to be sexually involved with me," clarifies Itachi in his usual display of 'completely missed the point.' "That would be mildly troubling, and I am afraid I would have to reject your advances."

I giggle. Quietly. Sasuke is still in warpath mode.

"However, you did tail us to the restaurant, and I believe you were planning to ambush us at _The Founding of Konoha_. Therefore, that is my deduction."

"Nii-san—"

"I am not going to ignore you because I have become involved with Hinata-san, Sasuke."

Sasuke's mouth falls open in the way that people's mouths only fall open when they've just heard exactly what they were thinking, but don't want to admit it. This is a very precise facial expression. It's common among shinobi because their collective emotional maturity falls somewhere between that of rabbits and paramecia.

Itachi brings up his finger and pokes Sasuke in the forehead.

"Foolish little brother," he says. "Next time you feel the need to intervene in my personal life, discuss it with me first."

Sasuke lurches to his feet and brushes himself off. "I'm not—I mean—you can date whoever you want, nii-san," he says loftily, although he still looks mildly pole-axed. Then he makes a series of unintelligible and mystifying noises. "I—uh. You. Nii-san. Hm."

"Apology accepted," says Itachi graciously.

See what I mean? Emotionally stunted.

Sasuke casts a venomous look at me, although it's not quite as psychotic as before. "Enjoy your date," he mutters, and then with a leap he's off again, and Itachi and I are left alone on the mildly charred rooftop.

"I apologize for that," says Itachi. "Sasuke can be possessive."

It suddenly becomes clear to me that I am standing on a rooftop with Uchiha Itachi wearing an only mildly wrinkled fancy dress and fairly hungry and in _uncomfortable date shoes_, and Sasuke is most definitely not the ideal topic of discussion. But from a look at the sun, it's clear that we've probably missed the evening showing of _The Founding of Konoha_, so I'm not really sure what I should suggest. I'm about to find some way to say "Thank you for the wonderful evening" that doesn't sound insultingly ironic when Itachi walks right past me and scoops up a bag he apparently dropped on the ground.

"I told Shisui and Neji-kun to go ahead to the theater, but you and I," he says, "have not had dinner."

The bag says _Ichiraku Ramen_. Or possibly _manna from heaven. _I don't know. There might not be a difference.

Itachi brushes off a little alcove of the roof and gestures to me to take a seat. Then he gives me my ramen and chopsticks and takes out the few dozen boxes of dango he's picked up for himself. We say our "_Itadakimasu_!" and enjoy a few moments of blissful miso-scented silence, during which Itachi polishes off a few skewers of dango in unheard-of amounts of time and even breaks out the two containers of packaged milk he picked up for us. Strawberry, of course. I'm smiling so hard I can barely chew.

Then, while I'm finishing off my second container, Itachi puts his hands together and makes a few seals. I recognize them as genjutsu-type seals and panic for a second.

"Wh-what are you d-doing?"

"Dinner and a show was what I promised," he says by way of explanation.

The rooftop and the orange-tinted sky of the entertainment district bleed out slowly and flawlessly, replaced by what looks like a school auditorium. Belatedly, I recognize it as the stage at the Academy.

"I am sorry you cannot see it at the theater," says Itachi.

As I watch in the genjutsu, a tiny child wanders onto the stage, completely serious despite the ludicrous cardboard breastplate he seems to be wearing. The Konoha symbol is awkwardly crayoned onto the front. He's wearing a felt headband.

"I, Hashirama Senju, hereby declare this village-" says little Itachi seriously, and trips over his 'armor.' He rights himself remarkably quickly. "—Kono…Konoha!" In the front row, Uchiha Mikoto seems to be sobbing proudly into a little embroidered handkerchief, and Uchiha Fugaku is repeatedly muttering "As expected of my son."

This time I can't even stop a crazed little squeal of delight.

"It is rather inane," says Itachi, and moves as if to dispel the genjutsu. I grab his sleeve before really allowing my synapses to fire.

"N-no!" I say. "Itachi-san, this is—this is p-perfect!"

His eyes grow a little round.

"You are not upset that Sasuke ruined this date?"

"It's n-not ruined!"

He still looks doubtful. So I set my ramen down, move a little closer to him, and kiss him on the cheek. It gets a little easier every time, and I'm sure it'll get even easier if he keeps doing things like _this_.

Itachi smiles very slightly. His sharingan spin on autopilot, maintaining the genjutsu.

"All right," he says. "Let us watch, then. Shisui's part will be of great interest to you."

Shisui at five indeed cuts quite a figure as Uchiha Madara, although at one point his wig slips off and he bursts into tears, wailing about how his hair is ruined and there's no point in going on with the show. A panicked-looking—and much younger—Kurenai-sensei ushers him backstage and brings him back out again with a new wig, at which point he preens and flounces around and nearly knocks Itachi cross-eyed with a 'battle fan' made out of rice paper and pipe cleaners.

I laugh and laugh and finish my ramen and huddle a little closer to Itachi, and at some point he says, quite matter-of-factly, "If you are scared, you may hold on to me."

"Itachi-san, i-it's an Academy p-play…"

He considers this.

"Very well," he amends. "You may hold on to me for no reason, then."

So I do just that.

**~X~**

_end_


End file.
